f 




THEOLOGICAL 
ESSAYS 



A.V.C.P. HUIZINQA 



UBRAFY OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 




Qami^^ 



CQEflUGICr DEPQSm 



THEOLOGICAL 

ESSAYS 




£ V. c. p.'huizinga 




BOSTON 

THE GORHAM PRESS 

MCMXVIII 



Copyright, 1918, by A. V. C. P. Huizinga. 
All Rights Reserved 






MADE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



The Gobham Press, Boston, U. S. A 

MAR 11 1918- 



©CI.A494036 ^j ^s'^ 



To Holland's Grand Old Man, 

Dr. Abraham Kuyper, 

Statesman, Theologian, Publicist, 

These Essays Are Inscribed as a 

Tribute by the Author 



PREFACE 

In giving these essays to the press the author is fully 
aware that too many theological treatises already claim 
attention. Besides, so many other subjects occupy the 
modern mind. Why then add to the large number of 
theological essays. Simply because these have a place 
in maintaining the orthodox standards, and of such 
there are none too many nowadays. Furthermore the 
author hopes that these essays may serve to spread the 
everlasting evangelical truth here as in his native land. 
In the Netherlands under the able leadership and life- 
long labors of Dr. Kuyper the evangelical standards of 
the Reformed faith are everywhere stoutly maintained. 
Here almost everywhere outside Princeton Theological 
Seminary the principles of the Reformation sadly need 
to be reaffirmed. American prosperity, the pragmatic 
attitude of life, and the utilitarian principles of the 
great republic are not conducive to the right apprecia- 
tion of the Calvinistic faith. 

Honor is therefore due to Princeton for keeping so 
faithfully under these untoward circumstances to the 
evangelical standards. May Princeton become more 
and more the rallying point of all who wish to pre- 
serve the faith as once delivered unto the saints. The 
Dutch-Americans and the Dutch from South Africa 
number at times a score of students in Princeton. May 
the Holland-Dutch also find more their way to Prince- 
ton into the United States, and may the Dutch-Ameri- 
cans turn increasingly towards the rich theological lore 
of the Netherlands and keep in close touch with the 
cultural and Christian treasures of their native land! 

It will be of great benefit to all. It will be of great 
benefit every way. Old Holland might make even 
• 5 



6 Preface 

greater contributions to the world than it yet has made. 
Where people nowadays are drifting with every wind 
of doctrine, not the least contribution would be the 
preservation and the spread of the old evangelical faith. 
The wide introduction here of the Dutch national 
anthem, that beautiful battle hymn of the Reformation, 
Wilhelmus van Nassauwe, alone would be a contribu- 
tion of inestimable value. Where is the poet to render 
it into English? 

Two of these essays have appeared in the Bibliotheca 
Sacra and one has been published separately before. 

A. V. C. p. HUIZINGA. 

Thompson, Conn. 
January, 191 8. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 1 1 

I Spirit of the Age 1 1 

II Kant's Ethics Autonomic, but Wholly 

Unlike Modern Morality 13 

III A Theistic Basis Needed for Moral Con- 

duct 17 

IV Faust's Pact With Mephistopheles Il- 

lustrates "Man Cannot Live by Bread 

Alone" 21 

V Pragmatic Morality and the Mosaic Law 25 

VI God's Will the Law of Christian Ethics 32 
VII Apparent Contradictions in Hedonism, 

Alleged Paradoxes 36 

VIII Biblical Content of the Christian Paradox 40 

Discussions on Damnation 44 

I Present Day Tendency to Ignore this 

Particular Subject 44 

II Reasons in the Influence of a Perverted 

Zeitgeist 52 

III Reasoned Argument of the Subject. .. . 58 

IV On Judgment in General 71 

Is "Proverbs" Utilitarian? 78 

Anent Might and Right 88 

Social or Individual Regeneration? 105 



Theological Essays 



THE HEDONISTIC AND THE CHRISTIAN 
PARADOX 

I. Spirit of the Age 

f~\ UR age is professedly indulgent. The modern 
^^ man dislikes intensely the harsh discipline of by- 
gone days. Hence the present phase of self-indulgence 
in our social life calls insistently for the removal of all 
irksome restraints. All bonds must be broken. Now 
that man has found himself in these enlightened days 
he must be free from the trammels of the past. In fact, 
did ever restraints function beneficially either to the 
individual or to society? Is it not the very nature of 
restraint to keep down, to suppress, to dwarf or distort 
our natural endowments ? Thus the modernist aims in 
matters of religion at the removal of intellectual dis- 
cipline which as dead dogma of the past naturally in- 
terferes with the spontaneous activity which character- 
izes the new religion. 

Religion subjective. For the religion of the modern- 
ist is a religion de moi, strikingly individualistic, an- 
cillary to aesthetic sentiment and poetic rapture. The 
modern Weltanschauung enhances the sum-total of 
life's yields, the religious view compensates in a ma- 
terialistic atmosphere for the lack of the true spirit of 
science, poetry, and art in one's life; it colors the dull, 
prosaic reality bright with the ideals of unseen worlds. 
Thus religion becomes an aid to life, and may serve as a 
substitute for aesthetic and poetic appreciation of the 
world, as the pagan poet Goethe had it: 
II 



12 Theological Essays 

"Wer Wissenschajt hat und Kunst 
Der hat auch Religion. 
Und wer sie nicht hatj 
Der habe Religion/' 

Individualism in Society. The modernist view in 
regard to society similarly aims at setting the individual 
free from the bonds which society imposes. The sanc- 
tions of the past that still would bind individual free- 
dom are like superstitions, haunting the living present 
like the ghosts in Ibsen's play. Life must not be cir- 
cumscribed by innumerable petty rules and regulations, 
each person should find within himself the true law of 
life. Thus each one becomes a rule to himself. Though 
individual morality is of necessity conditioned in its 
development and expression by the social milieu in 
which the individual moves, this is but the circumstance, 
the setting of life's play, and imposes no rules upon the 
player. Man struts a king upon this scene of modern- 
ity, and monarch of all he surveys, for individual claims 
come first. All authority is but human ; man-made are 
the highest sanctions that bind to earth or heaven. All 
authority finds its origin, as well as its justification in 
man. Consequently man alone is sovereign in this 
world ; and if in all things human, then also, and first 
of all, sovereign over himself ! 

Self -Realization. Hence arise the vaunted theories 
of self-realization, for man conjointly with his fellow 
creatures is the legislator and builder of his own des- 
tiny! Yet, in the conduct of life's career, the modern- 
ist finds still many difficulties in the way — and the 
greatest of them all is . . . himself. Precisely those 
persons who incline to drift farthest from man's evident 
purpose seem to proclaim loudest this motto of self- 
realization. 



The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 13 

The Quest for a Rule of Life. When the advocates 
of self-realization face this main obstacle, man himself, 
they repair to a better rationale for the conduct of life. 
Man, the author of his own morality, must set order in 
his mode of living. For the modernist, who makes 
man the author of his own morality, does not perceive 
the difficulty that man-made morality can hardly rule 
man, for the simple reason that the alleged law can- 
not possibly be rendered obligatory upon its own author. 
He therefore lays the faults to the wrong way of con- 
ducting the art of living. The rule of life is not suit- 
ably chosen, or not consistently and rationally followed. 
Thus rules of right living come in order. 

In a materialistic, pleasure-loving age the most ac- 
ceptable rules for the conduct of life are those which 
meet the Zeitgeist. As our age dislikes forbidding, 
harsh discipline, and craves indulgence to the desires 
of the heart, it is but natural that the hedonistic theories 
to-day are revived under different names, as individual- 
istic, autonomic, utilitarian, evolutionary and other 
brands of ethics. The pleasure loving age has its high- 
day, and formulates again its self-indulgent life-prac- 
tices in various ways on every hand. Martensen ob- 
serves: "This abstract autonomic morality only ap- 
pears at those seasons when there is also religious de- 
cay." ( Christian Ethics, p. 17). 

II. Kant's Ethics Autonomic, But Wholly Un- 
like Modern Morality 

If it should be urged that Kant proclaimed autono- 
my in ethics, and yet formulates a most rigoristic theory 
of ethics, it is well to remember that Kant's whole sys- 
tem is one safeguard against self-indulgent individual- 
ism. The stars above and the moral law within in- 



14 Theological Essays 

spire him with ever-undiminished awe and wonder. 
Though he, indeed, declared that reason legislates with- 
in the soul by its own right, thus proclaiming autono- 
my in ethics, his imperative of the practical reason as 
final authority of duty is a categorical imperative. We 
remember what special pains he took to safeguard his 
imperative from individual influence and inclination, 
how he set the moral dictum artificially, seemingly al- 
most arbitrarily, against one's personal likes, calling 
forth Schiller's well-known bantering epigram. Sig- 
nificant also is the circumstance that Kant failed to give 
the categorical imperative specific form. The norma- 
tive principle of his ethics has no content. Thus Kant's 
categorical imperative remains an impersonal dictum, 
leaving the ethical law to be applied by the individual. 

View of Religion. When then again Kant defines 
religion as *'the taking of our duties as divine com- 
mands" {''Religion ist die Auferfassung unserer 
Pflichte als gottliche Gebote''), he stands by whole 
diameters removed from the modern autonomic moral- 
ist. Kant, in fine was profoundly influenced by Chris- 
tianity. The early training by his pious mother and 
the subsequent teaching of dogmatics by Shultz may 
well account for the adoption of Christian elements 
which were impossible of assimilation in his system. 
Though Kant's Critique of Pure Reason would not 
allow him to relate theoretically the moral law to its 
source, his practical reason has constant regard for 
God, as the ground of the moral law. Thus only can 
we account for the unconditional claim on man's obe- 
dience, thus only can Kant speak of an erring conscience 
as a chimera! 

No Erring Conscience. Of course, an erring con- 
science is not a chimera, but a sadly constant fact of 
everyday experience. However, where-as in Kant's 



The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 15 

system — the imperative is left an impersonal dictum, 
and conscience thus emptied of content except the form- 
al distinction between right and wrong, the judgment 
may stand. Conscience thus defined, however, would 
not be confined within man, but refers necessarily back 
to God. 

Emphasis on a Good Will. Moreover the fact that 
Kant strongly emphasizes a good will — "Nothing in 
this world or even outside it is to be considered abso- 
lutely good, except a good will" — possibly prevents him 
from being classed with modern autonomic ethics which 
take a strong individualistic turn. For thus he ap- 
proaches the Christian aspiration for a recitude of will, 
and though his good will is not distinctly brought to 
its author, here too the petition of the Lord's prayer 
may be taught; "Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
Heaven!" Though Kant's ethics are autonomic, they 
are kept from all individualistic turns — apart from the 
above observed safeguarding against personal likes and 
dislikes — by their formal universality. 

Ethical Law in Man^ not wholly of Man. As the 
Critique of Pure Reason declares: "Macht der Ver- 
stand zwar die Natur^ aher er schafft sie nicht/' so in 
Kant's ethical system, man, to be sure, makes the law, 
but he creates it not. There might properly be drawn 
a parallel between Kant's empty concepts and his form- 
al ethical law. As concepts without percepts are blind, 
so Kant's ethical law without content remains bare and 
formal. 

Quotation from Kant. Kant says in his Critique 
of Practical Reason : theorem 4, "Autonomy of will is 
the sole principle of all moral laws, and of the duties 
which are in conformity with them. Heteronomy of 
will, on the other hand, not only supplies no basis for 
obligation, but it is contradictory of the principle of 



1 6 Theological Essays 

obligation and of the morality of the will. The single 
principle of morality thus consists in independence of 
all matter of the law, that is, of every object of desire, 
and in the determination of the will through the mere 
universal form of law, of which a maxim must be 
capable. This independence of all matter is freedom 
in the negative sense, just as self-legislation of pure 
practical reason is freedom in the positive sense." 

Kant Confined to Phenomenal PForld. The quota- 
tion illustrates how Kant, captive to the conception of 
his noumenon {Ding an sich) was rigidly held within 
the limitation of phenomena. He admits in the Critique 
of Judgment: "The conception of an absolutely neces- 
sary being is an indispensable idea of reason, but it is an 
idea which remains for human intelligence a problem 
which it cannot solve." "It is at least possible," — he 
goes on — "to regard the material world as a mere 
phenomenon, and to conceive of its substrate as a thing 
in itself to which an intellectual perception corresponds. 
Thus we get the idea of a suprasensible and real ground 
of the world of nature to which we ourselves belong, al- 
though that ground is not for us an object of knowl- 
edge." Similarly he observes: "There is no adequate 
reason for regarding external phenomena as such from 
a teleological point of view; the reason for it must be 
sought in the suprasensible substrata of phenomena. 
But as we are shut out from any possible view of that 
substratum, it is impossible for us to find in nature 
grounds for an explanation of nature." (Watson's 
translation). It is only too evident that for the great 
sage of Konigsberg it was forever: "Ein vergebliches 
Rutteln an den Cittern der Kerkerfenster seiner 
Erscheinungswelt/' for as he maintained in the Critique 
of Pure Reason the wildest hypothesis is preferable to 
an appeal to the supernatural (Doctrine of Method). 



The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 17 

III. A Theistic Basis Needed for Moral Conduct 

Green s Theistic Basis of Ethics. In this connection 
it is worthy of notice that Thomas H. Green prefaces 
his Prolegomena to Ethics with an epistemological 
discussion to establish a basis for his ethics. The spirit- 
ual element in knowledge constitutes the metaphysical 
introduction to Green's prolegomena. Sidgwick is 
greatly mistaken in declaring that this theistic basis and 
metaphysical consideration bear no connection to 
Green's ethics. On the contrary, Green felt that one 
cannot justify "a theory of values in human conduct" 
without guaranteeing the values on which our life-ac- 
tions are staked. For a serious discussion in this norma- 
tive science, we must make sure of our determinant of 
values. Thus Green's ethics are founded on Hegelian 
theology where objective and subjective mind figure 
prominently in their interrelation and inter-action. 

God the Source of Moral Law. No strictly ra- 
tional ethics is possible. We cannot, even in theory, 
be good without God. The postulate involved in 
every ethics that the individual destiny at best coincides 
with the larger good, and conversely, assumes a theistic 
basis. It is impossible to explain the sentiment of 
ought from what is. The feeling of ought is an orig- 
inal, un-analyzable fact. The revelation of God at the 
heart of man is the original source of all religion, and 
also the source of all obligations and duties, of whatever 
specific content they may be. 

This origin explains the commanding authority of 
the moral sentiment. Ethics discloses what is before 
us and behind us, the moral nature of what bears us 
and what leads us. What ought to be is felt to be the 
basis and ground as well as the goal of all that is. In 
the ethical sphere first and final causes merge into one, 



Theological Essays 



thus in the ethical nature the heart of reality is laid 
bare. It is safe to predict that in our age of indifference 
towards philosophical discipline we may expect a re- 
awakening of metaphysical studies through interest in 
ethical questions. Professor Eucken sounds a sig- 
nificant warning in his "Hauptprohleme der Religions 
philosophic der Gegenwart" when he says: "That the 
Metaphysical can be shown to be ethical, and the ethic- 
al to be metaphysical constitutes the characteristic na- 
ture and greatness as well as the constant tension of 
Christianity. Former times often have treated it 
one-sidedly as metaphics, let us beware to lower it to 
mere ethics." "Dass das Metaphysische sich als eth- 
isch und das Ethische sich als metaphysich erweistj das 
eben bildet die Eigentiimliche Art unr Grosse und 
zugleich auch eine fortwdhrende Spannung des Chris- 
tentums ; frilhere Zeiten haben es oft zu einseitig in 
Metaphysik verwandelt, hUten wir Neueren uns, es 
zu einer blossen Ethik sinken zu lassen/^ p. 89). Only 
when ethics rests on the religious basis of theistic be- 
lief have the English words duty and ought meaning, 
in that they refer to One who is Creator and Judge, to 
whom is due, to whom is owed, to whom we pray that 
He "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." 
Thus it is that the very prologue of the Decalogue bases 
morality upon religion, while the last commandment 
addresses itself to the inner recesses of the heart re- 
quiring that the will of God be done from the heart. 
Paul affirms that unless the Law had said : "Thou shalt 
not covet," he would not have known what sin meant. 
Fan Hartfnann Quoted. Even Edward von Hart- 
mann admits freely: "All facts point to the circum- 
stances that the ethical consciousness of man has de- 
veloped exclusively on the basis of religious conviction, 
that ethics nowhere has arisen without this, and that 



The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 19 

in its specific coloring it everywhere has been condi- 
tioned and determined by religion." {"Das religiose 
Bewusstsein. der Menschheif') . To conceive of the 
purpose for which we are created, "the chief end of 
man to glorify God and enjoy Him forever," affords 
an objective authoritative norm. The impossibility of 
its psychological explanation only corroborates the fact 
of its being a primordial rule inherent in the nature of 
God. The modern world, however, forms rules as a 
consequence of our own desires. 

Hoffding says: "As the concept of purpose depends 
on the concept of worth, so also the concept of norm 
depends on the concept of purpose. The norm is the 
rule for the activity which is necessary to attain the 
purpose" {Problems of Philosophy). 

Modern Morality Means that Man is to be Happy. 
Kant, in spite of his disavowal of the supernatural as 
the source of ethical command, clearly differs with 
modern morality in his insistence that ethics is of inner 
personal worth, evaluated not on motive, but on self- 
perfection in rectitude of will. Modern morality leaves 
fixed standards, for desire is paramount. The new 
freedom plays fast and loose with binding rules. Mod- 
ern morality computes its course according to the prob- 
able pleasure-yield of situations before the agent's eager 
eye. The source and standard of ethical behavior is 
neither in God, nor in man, but lies before us in what 
life may give of joy and happiness. Man's thinking 
is related organically to his conduct. Thus in the 
pleasure-pursuit with dreams of joy the modern man 
pictures happiness as the all-inclusive aim of life. Man 
is made for happiness! The "Man of Sorrows" has no 
place in this modern view of life. Life, becomes an 
avowed pursuit of pleasure, must itself be regarded as 
an object of pleasure. 



20 Theological Essays 

Sonnet of Alfred de Musset. How strikingly, how- 
ever, contrast with the words of the ''Man of Sor- 
rows": "I came that they might have life and have it 
abundantly," the frivolous morale of French infidelity 
as in Alfred de Musset's sonnet : 

''Dieul'a voulu, nous cherchons le plaisir. 
Tout vrai regard est un desir; 
Mais le desir nest rien si Von nespere; 
Et d'esperer c est une affaire. 
C'est pourquoi nous devons aimer Villusion, 
Beni soit le premier qui sut trouver un nom 
A la demi-folie 
A ce reve enchante 
Qui ne prend de la verite 
Que ce quil faut pour faire aimer la vie!'' 

Other Literary Verdicts. It would seem that illu- 
sion and disappointment lurk amidst the life-designs of 
gayety which frivolity cannot always evade or escape. 
In fact, it is a rather general verdict that states of 
happy consciousness are not easily contrived. Those 
who have most experience in pleasure seeking tell of 
disappointed effort. 

Keats. Keats voices it in a fine description, where 
"la belle dame sans merci" enthralls those who chase 
the bubbles of life, when he concludes: 

"Let the winged fancy roam. 
Pleasure never is at home." 

Carlyle. Carlyle exclaims in grim sarcasm: "But 
it is said our religion is gone. God's absolute laws, 
sanctioned by an eternal Heaven and an eternal Hell, 
have become moral philosophies, sanctioned bv able 



The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 21 

computations of Profit and Loss, by weak considera- 
tions of Pleasure of Virtue and the Moral Sublime. It 
is even so. To speak in the ancient dialect, we 'have 
forgotten God' — in the modern dialect and very truth 
of the matter, we have taken up the Fact of the Uni- 
verse as it is not. The prophets preach to us, 'thou 
shalt be happy, thou shalt love pleasant things, and 
find them.' The people clamor, 'why have we not 
found pleasant things?' We construct our theory of 
Human Duties, not on any Greatest Nobleness princi- 
ple, never so mistaken, no, but on a Greatest Happiness 
principle. The word soul with us, as in some Slavonic 
dialects, seems to be synonymous with stomach. The 
Greatest Happiness Principle fast seems to be becoming 
a rather unhappy one! What if we should cease bab- 
bling about happiness, and leave it resting on its own 
basis, as we used to do!" 

Longfellow. Similarly Longfellow's Psalm of Life 
enjoins : 

"Not enjoyment and not sorrow 
Is our destined end or way 
But to act that each to-morrow 
Find us farther than to-day." 

IV. Faust's Pact With Mephistopheles Illus- 
trates ''Man Cannot Live By Bread Alone" 

The most classic instance of the disappointing pleas- 
ure pursuit in the world's literature is perhaps Faust's 
pact with Mephistopheles. It is worth while to give it 
here in this light at some length, because of its fine 
observation and its literary excellence. 

Goethe makes it plain from the beginning that even 
the sceptic Faust doubts that Mephistopheles ever 
should satisfy him fully. 



22 Theological Essays 

When Mephistopheles says: 

^^Ich will mich hier zu deinem Dienst verbinden, 
Auf deinen Wink nicht rasten und nicht ruhn. 
Wenn wir uns driiben wieder finden, 
So sollst du mir das Gleiche tun." 

Faust answers: 

"Das Driiben kann mich wenig kummern; 
Schldgst du erst diese Welt in Trummern, 
Die andre mag darnach entstehn. 
A us dieser Erde quillen meine Freuden, 
Und diese Sonne scheinet meinen Leiden; 
Kann ich mich erst von ihnen scheiden 
Dann mag, was will und kann geschehn. 
Davon will ich nichts weiter horen, 
Ob man auch kiinftig hasst und liebt, 
Und ob es auch in jenen Sphdren 
Ein oben oder Unter giebt. 

Mephistopheles observes, that with such sceptic senti- 
ments about the future world it is easy for Faust to risk 
the bargain, and promises him unprecedented earthly 
joy. 

"In diesem Sinne kannst dus waaen. 
Verbinde dich; du sollst, in dies en Tagen, 
Mit Freuden meine Kunste sehn. 
Ich gebe dir, was noch kein Mensch gesehnJ" 

Thereupon Faust retorts with bitter sarcasm that 
these earthly joys are forever transitory, volatile and 
ephemeral. 



The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 23 

"Was willst du armer Teufel gebenf 
Ward eines Menschen Geist, in seinem hohen Streben 
Von deinesgleichen je gefasstf 
Doch hast du Speise, die nicht sat tig t^ hast 
Du rotes Gold, das ohne Rast, 
Quecksilber gleich, dir in der Hand zerrinnt, 
Ein Spielj bei dem man nie gewinnt, 
Ein Madchen, das an meiner Brust 
Mit Ailgeln schon dem Nachbar sich verbindet, 
Der Ehre schone Gotterlust, 
Die, wie ein Meteor, verschwindetf 
Zeig'neir die Frucht, die fault, eh'man sie bricht, 
Und Bdume, die sich tdglich neu begriinenT 

Faust, then, has no illusion that Mephistopheles ever 
should wholly satisfy him, but if Faust should find full 
satisfaction in what Mephistopheles offers, then he is 
also his willing slave. 

"Und Schlag auf SchlagI 
Werd'ich zum Augenblicke sag en: 
Verweile doch! du bist so schon! 
Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen, 
Dann will ich gem zu Grunde gehn." 

How difficult a task Mephistopheles has to captivate 
Faust wholly becomes evident subsequently throughout 
the drama. As Schroer observes: "Sein auf das Reale 
gerichtecer Sinn, der aber, bei liebevoller Betrachtung 
dem Realen das Ideale ab gewinnt, er off net ihm (dem 
Faust) die Erkenntniss des Dauernden im Wechsel. 
Vergebens dass Mephistopheles ihm zum Gemeinen 
herabzuziehen bemilht ist, Faust's Blick ist fest auf das 
Dauernde gerichtet/' It is on account of this estimate 
of Faust, giving the priority of the ideal over the actual, 



24 Theological Essays 

of the spiritual world over the world of earthly, sensu- 
ous things that the crux of the drama is rightly found 
in ''Die fins t ere Gallerie/' 

Here the tide of Faust's struggles turns to victory 
for the ideal, because Faust of his own account, in 
spite of Mephistopheles, sets out resolutely in search for 
the ideal. Mephistopheles, whose horizon is limited to 
sensuous things, treats Faust's fancied quest as foolish. 
Helena, the German spirit, is to be wedded, starts off 
a gradual assent of Faust, giving him ''Uberlegenheit'' 
over Mephistopheles. 

In the classic, romantic Walpurgusnight of the sec- 
ond part, it is important to realize fully that Faust 
in carrying the keys to search for Helena, holds indeed 
the key to his own salvation, and gains victory over 
Mephistopheles, his evil self. By means of these keys 
he is led to "das Ewig-weibliche/' to ''die Mutter j" 

Mephistopheles has misgivings and objects: 

"JJngern entdeck' ich, hoheres Geheimniss 
Gottinnen thronen hehr in Einsamkeit, 
Um sie kein Ort, noch weniger eine Zeit; 
Von ihnen sprechen ist Verlegenheit, 
Die Mutter sind esT 

Faust, however, is profoundly stirred by the mention 
of "die Mutter.'' LcEper tells us that Eckerman's in- 
quiry after the meaning of "die Mutter ' was met by 
Goethe in semi-sarcastic way, but indicated that he 
meant to give it all the significance of "das Ewig- 
weihliche." "Die Mutter sind die Urhilder, Ideale 
alles Dasein, sie miissen Mephistopheles um so wider- 
w'drtiger Sein, da er ja die Ideale nicht vermag wahr 
zu nehmen" In spite of Mephistopheles's arguments, 
Faust persists in his quest for the ideal, and replies to 



The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 25 

the sneer of Mephistopheles of "Nothingness," ''Oed 
und Einsamkeit/' simply: "Nur immer zu! Wir wollen 
es ergriinden. In deinem Nichts hoff'ich das All zu 
finden!" And — "das Ewig-weibliche zieht uns hinan' 
— when Faust sinks down at the close of the drama and 
the evil spirits, the lemures, take him up, only to lay 
him down upon the ground, Mephistopheles in his im- 
potence to prevail over Faust, sneers the spiteful com- 
ment : 

"Ihn sdttigt keine Lust, ihm gniigt kein Gliick 
So buhlt er fort nach wechselnden Gestalten 
Den letzten, leer en Augenblick 
Der Arme wiinscht ihn fest zu halten/' 

V. Pragmatic Morality and the Mosaic Law 

While thus in literature verdicts abound which pro- 
claim the folly and futility of pleasure not only as the 
dominating pursuit in life, but even of pleasure as a 
pursuit in life, it is preached from the very housetops 
nowadays that life is to be exploited ; its capacities are 
to yield us satisfaction, ease and joy. We are to have 
a good time while it lasts. Meanwhile it is high time 
that the ten commandments were held up again before 
the multitude. The Decalogue as a summary of man's 
duty to God and to his fellowman must resume its 
claims against the boundless, insatiable assumption of 
selfish desire which runs riot in the domain of modern 
morality. Not the assumptions of the intellect are the 
modern foe to the rules of faith and practice, it is the 
new mode of living, the dominating and domineering 
demands for pleasure, ease, and indulgence which set 
duties aside and would do away with pain. Even the 
pragmatist William James observed: "We have had 



26 Theological Essays 

of late too much of the philosophy of tenderness in 
education. ... Soft pedagogies have taken the place 
of the old steep and rocky path to learning. But from 
this lukewarm air the bracing oxygen of effort is left 
out. It is nonsense to suppose that every step in educa- 
tion can be interesting." James might have observed 
also that a man cannot be subject to the mere desire 
to please self, when he is fired with the desire to please 
God. 

Pragmatism is a theory of success, and an accursed 
success if taken as the world generally views it. Yet 
Pragmatism leaves you with no rule except success 
which thereby renders the alleged rule as rule invalid. 
Thus Pragmatism emancipates of all objective law, it 
weakens the sense of duty, does away with inviolate 
rules, principles, conscience. Tartuffe may now pro- 
claim aloud without contradiction : "True knowledge 
extends the limits of our conscience according to our 
needs." (Moliere). 

The character of one's life is determined by, and 
stands revealed in, the character of the will. In all 
questions of morals we come back to the will and fasten 
moral responsibility there. But as everywhere else, so 
here too, God's will is law. 

"Our wills are ours to make them Thine." 

In pragmatism the concrete is made the test of the 
"universal," the particular rules the general, nay pro- 
duces it. There is no allowance for transcendence, 
and pragmatism is quite logical, that thus shut up with 
in the temporal, it claims to be its own test. The 
sophists are in order again with the well-known Xprj 
fxarojv fxerpov avOpomo-i. The pragmatist proclaims an 
anti-absolute movement, as pragmatism should claim 



The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 27 

"the right to participate in the construction as well as 
in the execution of the ideal." 

Professor Moore treats this discussion frankly and 
ably in his "Pragmatism and its Critics/' In reply to 
the statement of Professor Royce (in The world and 
the Individual J I 460 ff.) that the absolute although in- 
clusive of all possible purposes, is still selective, he 
proposes two questions: I. How can the absolute pur- 
pose be "all-inclusive" and still be selective, as psy- 
chologically a purpose must be? II. This all-inclusive 
purpose is, at the same time, its own fulfillment. Pro- 
fessor Moore's insistence to be able to solve the meta- 
physical problem with the psychological data available 
suffices for him to reject the absolutist philosophy. He 
states: "What puzzles the pragmatist is to see why we 
should still be working at this organization, if it were 
absolutely complete and final. To answer by an ap- 
peal to 'the finite standpoint' seems a petitio of the 
simplest type" (p. 137). With transcendency gone, 
teleology loses its raison d'etre. He urges further that 
the absolutist's conception does not furnish any definite 
indication toward the absolute goal beyond the as- 
surance that there is such a final goal, and refers to 
Bradley's statement, that we cannot tell whether we 
are making for the goal, or away from it. The direc- 
tion of the final goal is known and can be known to 
NO finite being. All these questions are certainly per- 
tinent from the rationalist standpoint. If the super- 
natural is brought within the compass of experience, 
psychology should claim precedence over metaphysics, 
explain all, and a "transcendent purpose" would be 
inadmissible. Professor Moore, therefore, finds the 
statement of Professor Baldwin puzzling, when the lat- 
ter asks, "How can practical life adequately test the 
validity of modes which essentially claim to transcend 



28 Theological Essays 

the experience of real life?" He puts this critical ques- 
tion, "Waiving at present the problem of the relevance 
of an ideal not constructed in the process in which it 
functions, is not participation in the construction of the 
plan we are to help carry out the very basis of moral 
responsibility? How is it possible to feel responsible 
for the mere execution of a purpose which we have not 
helped to form? And is it not strange that a plan 
which we have helped to construct should have any less 
authority and binding force than one ready made and 
given?" (p. 266). 

It will be observed here that the final goal is revealed 
in Him who said, "I am the way, the truth and the 
life." The circumstance that this revelation is received 
only by saving faith rules out all rational approaches. 
Within the finite experience the Infinite speaks, 
however, and the relevance of the ideal constructions is, 
that they are our own as to the forms. We help instru- 
mentally to form these ideal constructions but sub nu- 
mine Dei. Moreover that an ideal which is not only as 
to its form, but in its nature and origin our own, should 
have less binding force and authority than one which 
stands over us, and yet is of us, seems quite plain. An 
ideal which is wholly of our own creation seems a mere 
abstraction of the natural function of the individual 
in the situation. Pragmatists, however, work with 
two values of the concrete situation to meet the time- 
honored individual and universal elements in experi- 
ence of the old school. If all transcendence, how- 
ever, is denied, there is no room for these two values, 
for if experience is self-containing, then it contains also 
these relations which knit it to other concrete situations, 
other parts of real life. 

Nietzsche a Logical Atheist. Nietzsche, "der Athe- 
ist in logischer Reinkultur" is the most consistent dis- 



The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 29 

claimer of bonds, and binding law. The "Herren- 
moraV for his ''Ubermensch'' is ''Jenseits von Gut und 
Bose/' (Werkej Band VII). Thus he observes: 
''JVer noch an einen Gegensatz von Gut und Bose 
glaubtj der hangt immer noch im Netz des alten Got- 
tesglauhens; wer gebrochen hat mit dem Glauben an 
einen Gott, der kann nur noch reden von fdrderlich und 
hinderlich im Blick auf irgend ein Ziel/' This is con- 
sistent pragmatism and this radical of modernity pro- 
claims boldly: ''Was sind denn diese Kirchen noch, 
wenn sie nicht die Griifte und Grabdenkm'dler Gottes 
sindr In his "Also sprach Zarathustra' the tables of 
the law are broken, to be rewritten at one's own dis- 
cretion. Characteristic is also in Zarathustra his so- 
called " trunkenes hied," "in den Stundenschlag der 
Uhr eingefasst/' 

"O MenschI Gib Achtf 
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternachtf 
Aus tiefem Traum bin ich erwacht: 
Die Welt ist tief, 
Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht. 
Tief ist ihr W eh — 
hust — tiejer noch als Herzeleid'. 
Weh spricht, V erg eh, 
Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit 
Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit T 

Nietzsche's admirers extoll "das trunkene Lied" 
as the profound expression that the deepest wisdom rec- 
ognizes joy as the essence of life. 

The Role of Desire. — Except this enfant terrible of 
the modern school, most thinkers, however, moderate 
the claims of happiness and pleasure, and the con- 
sequent role of desire in life. 



30 Theological Essays 

Fichte. Fichte urged constantly upon his pupils: 
"We are not to strive to be happy, but to strive to be 
worthy to deserve happiness." Happiness thereby be- 
comes a by-product of right living. 

Hegel. The Hegelian theorem "Human desire is 
the personal in evolution of existence" is explained by 
Calderwood thus: "The intelligent agent desires, not a 
thing outside himself, but self-satisfaction, that is en- 
largement of being self-realization." {Handbook of 
Moral Philosophy, p. 141). This, in spite of the diffi- 
culties of the Hegelian system in doing justice to the 
"subjective mind," would make desire subservient to 
self. 

Bradley. F. H. Bradley, one of the ablest among 
English Hegelians, says: "What is clear at first sight 
is that to take virtue as a mere means to an ulterior 
end, is in dire antagonism to the voice of the moral 
consciousness ... to do good for its own sake is 
virtue." {Ethical Studies, pp. 56, 59). He allows 
thereby that to which all consciousness testifies to be 
an objective obligatory ideal. 

J. S. Mill. Similarly J. S. Mill declares: "The 
mind is not in a right state unless it loves virtue as a 
thing desirable in itself," and admits that the idea of 
duty is now distinct from the idea of happiness. 

Kidd Criticized. Benjamin Kidd holds that desire 
may be for self-gratification as well as for self-realiza- 
tion, while self-realization consists in the satisfaction 
of self as determining the desire, self-gratification con- 
sists in the satisfaction of desire to which the self has 
been subjected {Morality and Religion). Mr. Kidd 
evidently recognizes legitimate and illicit desires, which 
restrict the unlimited claim of desire as such. In the 
Kantian view of a self-legislative morality where the 
imperative is constitutive of the mind, yet holds aloof 



The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 31 

from desire, even as a subservient factor in ethical be- 
havior the phrases "self as determining the desire," 
and "desire to which the self has been subjected" might 
be explained. In Kidd's definition, however, they are 
vague, superficial terms. The desires are expressive of 
and function in the formation of character. In Hegelian 
sense, as Calderwood uses the term self above, the self 
as subjective mind is under law of the objective mind, 
as often, expressed, the self is the objective mind be- 
come subjective. We can understand these terms both 
in Kantian and in Hegelian sense, but as Mr. Kidd 
uses them : "self as determining the desire," = self-satis- 
faction, "desire to which the self has been subject" = 
self-gratification, it is meaningless jargon. Instead of 
explaining the idea, he is playing with the words satis- 
faction and gratification as added to the word self. Both 
refer to the self and Kidd's distinction is wholly un- 
warranted, as if the one desire should be ruled by self, 
and the other desire instead rule the self. Even, if 
etymological meanings should be given decisive weight 
in philosophical explanation Mr. Kidd must refer both 
satis (enough) and gratus (pleasing) equally to the 
self in facer e (to make), and has in his evolutionary 
ethics no warrant for his distinction. If one should 
substitute the word character for the word self his 
definition would acquire meaning in his system. Char- 
acter is, however, manifestly not the "fons et origo" of 
the moral act. In the expressions of will the character 
of a self stands revealed. This character is more 
determined by acts of will than cause of them, but 
it is never its source. Man forever acts with free 
personal responsibility to a personal God, "suh numine 
dei vigety Disciplined hearts are developed with man 
under the law of God ! "Out of the heart are the issues 
of life!" "With the heart man believeth unto righte- 



32 Theological Essays 



ousness ! 

The Ten Commandments. In this light, the rela- 
tion of the tables becomes significant ; the duties of man 
to God take precedence over those which he owes to 
his fellowmen. The first table has reference to the 
worship of God, who is to be revered and honored in 
I. His Person, II. His worship, III. His name, IV. His 
day, V. His representatives. 

The second table has reference to the service of man, 
who is to be protected in regard to VI. His life, VII. 
His family, VIII. His property, IX. His character, 
and this X. in thought and intent as well as act. As 
Christ thus summed up: "Love thy God with all thy 
heart, with all thy mind and with all thy strength 
(first table), and thy neighbor as thyself (second 
table). On these hang all the law and the prophets." 

VI. God's Will the Law of Christian Ethics 

In Christian philosophy one might properly speak of 
being determined by the law of life. Christian ethics 
provides man with an objective norm, as in our con- 
science we feel the impression of God's holy presence 
upon the heart of man. Through our indivisible spirit- 
ual nature we are in direct, personal relation with God, 
and experience His relation to us. Augustine rightly 
emphasized that the first point of all certitude is in 
consciousness, that the home of truth is in man. Draw- 
ing the attention from the external world, he focussed 
it upon the inner consciousness, exclaiming: "God, 
Thou hast created us unto Thyself, and our hearts are 
restless within us till they find rest in Thee!" "For 
what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole 
world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man 
give in exchange for his soul?" Indeed, the gospel ever 



The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 33 

urges in loving appeal upon man his soul-concern as his 
sole concern. 

It thereby sets aside all computations and contriv- 
ances of philosophies of virtue. God speaks and man 
must obey. The objective thou shalt of old was in its 
corresponding subjective / ought often worked out in 
the legalism of pharisaic contrivance after a utilitarian 
fashion, as indeed, the thou shalt has been rendered ever 
since into cudaemenism where not fully recognized in 
its binding authority. Out of life's experiences may be 
gathered wisdom unto life eternal. Therefore we 
should apply our hearts to wisdom. Evidences show us, 
as the inner verdict tells us, that no one less than 
God awaits our decision, and that an inevitable judg- 
ment attends our conduct. 

Proverbs in its urgent appeal to stand in the fear 
of the Lord takes particular notice of the disasters at- 
tending a life of sin. Yet, the main stress is laid on 
the motive, "Keep thy heart with all diligence for out 
of it are all the issues of life," and "He that sinneth 
against me wrongeth his own soul; all they that hate 
me love death." It becomes plain that even a cursory 
perusal of the book of Proverbs dispels the charge of its 
ethics being utilitarian. 

Criticism of Scope of Pleasure and Desire in Life. 
People cannot make themselves the judges of virtue. 
The proneness of human nature to incline towards 
pleasure and enjoyment, sometimes called psychological 
hedonism, brings all hedonistic ethics inevitably down 
to the level of the actual, and thereby the hedonistic 
theories cease to be ethics by being no more normative. 
Kant was fully aware of these dangers. As Hoffding 
observes: "Kant has become increasingly convinced that 
the happiness of the individual affords not test of the 
yalue of historical development." {History of Philo§- 



34 Theological Essays 

ophy, p. 77). This circumstance may shed light on the 
rigorism of his ethics. There is, to be sure, the too 
sadly evident fact that humanity is prone to hunt for 
pleasure, but it does not follow, because mankind is so 
apt to indulge consciously in this pursuit, that it ought 
to practice pleasure as it does. It is urged on all sides 
in justification of acts that are felt to be questionable, 
"everybody is doing it," "others do it too," but evi- 
dently not on ethical grounds. Kant, wisely erected in 
his system a barrier against the pleasure pursuit which 
our natures only too readily take up. We are to learn 
to will our duty, not to shape our duties to our wills! 
Then our alleged duties are too often simply our de- 
sires. Not whatever satisfies desire, or yields gratifica- 
tion, pleasure, is good. Desire itself is to be brought 
to a test. When pleasure-pursuit is subjected to a test 
superior to that of gratified desire, pleasure as a guid- 
ing principle is ruled out of court. 

Professor Palmer. Professor Palmer discusses this 
in The Nature of Goodness as follows: "In all good 
we find satisfaction of desire. But the definition is yet 
vague and inadequate. We still need some standard 
to test the goodness of desires. Desires are not detach- 
able facts. Each is significant only as a piece of life. 
In connection with that life it must be judged. And 
when we ask if any desire is good or bad, we really 
inquire how far it may play a part in company with 
other desires in making up a harmonious existence. By 
its organic quality, accordingly, we must ultimately de- 
termine the goodness of whatever we desire. But we 
cannot reverse the statement and assert that whatever 
satisfies desire will be organically good. Each object 
(and person, conjunct self) has relationships and 
through these is knitted into the framework of the 
universe. Pleasure probably is nothing else but the 



The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 35 

sense that some one of our functions has been ap- 
propriately exercised. Every time, that a volition has 
been carried forth in the complex world and there con- 
ducted to its mark (and, we would add, taken its in- 
ward effect) a gratified feeling arises." This reduces 
pleasure to an incident expression of the proper dis- 
charge of our function, our duty, ''given us" — Prof. 
Palmer tells us, "by something we cannot alter, fully 
estimate or with damage evade." 

Professor Felix Adler. Professor Felix Adler, lead- 
er of the Ethical Culture Society, similarly discounts 
pleasure, when he says in Life and Destiny : "It is said 
that we live in order to make the world better, but this 
phrase is ambiguous. Often it is used as referring mere- 
ly to an increase of the sum of human pleasure. And 
this would be an aim by no means comparable in 
grandeur and sublimity to that which religion in the 
past has set up. The sole fact that we demand un- 
selfishness in action assures us that the standard of en- 
lightened self-interest is false. The higher life is as 
real as the grosser things in which we put our trust. 
But our eyes must be anointed so that we may see it." 
Victor Hugo exclaims even with eloquent climax: "It 
is a terrible thing to be happy! How being in the pos- 
session of the false aim of life, happiness, we forget the 
true aim, duty!" 

Opposing Definitions of the Ethical Life. It be- 
comes abundantly clear that we should affirm em- 
phatically against the modern moralities which make 
pleasure the law of life and enthrone desire its king; 
that the ethical life, far from being a primrose path 
determined by transient pleasures, should be taken 
rather as exacting duty under the demands of the In- 
finite and Eternal ! 

Pain and Pleasure Bound up in Life. It is well to 



36 Theological Essays 

remember that as man has a capacity for pleasure, so he 
has a capacity for pain. Emerson even affirmed that 
the rank of man in nature is his capacity for pain. 
Moreover pain and pleasure are not so sharply dis- 
tinguished as one would be led to believe at first 
thought. Many an exquisite pain is mingled with pleas- 
urable sensations, and the keenest pleasure is often akin 
to pain. According to an Old Dutch saw, espousing 
pleasure as a guide in life leads to pain. 

"Genot is zoo luttel 
En smart is zoo veel 
Bij de jacht naar het eerste 
Wordt't laatste ons deel." 

Theory and Practice not always Exact Counterparts. 
It goes without saying that the exponents of these 
hedonistic theories are fortunately not all consistent 
in their practice. We may grant readily that many a 
hedonist has come in practice nearer the Garden of 
Gethsemane, than to an Epicurean sty. Some people 
are not so bad as their profession would make us be- 
lieve, though mostly people are not so good as their 
profession or appearance. Besides we always may ap- 
ply in practice character as a test of doctrine, as much 
as doctrine as a test of character. 

VII. Apparent Contradictions in Hedonism, 
Alleged Paradoxes 

The paradox of hedonism refers to pleasure as an 
illusive end. In popular statement it runs: "He that 
seeks pleasure shall lose it." More specifically the 
paradox is urged as meaning that pleasure, consciously 
entertained and pursued with deliberate anticipation, 



The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 37 

must forever disappoint, because, though we may plan 
for it, we cannot control its realization, since pleasure 
as a consciously entertained end, discounts itself so far 
forth as it is made the end of conscious effort by its 
reaction upon the pursuing agent. Common experience 
seems to indicate this when in its disappointed pleasure 
it explains: "Perhaps I expected too much." When 
expectation is on the strain it is hardly ever realized. 
This failure in hedonistic practice assumes a subjective 
reference. Man's nature sports with the hedonistic 
attempts. If one is not even sure of securing the single 
definite pleasurable state of self, and in order to suc- 
ceed must keep his eye off it, much less can he prolong 
the happy state or make it constant so as to render man 
really happy. Even if pleasure could be so gained, the 
method of securing it by avoiding to entertain it con- 
sciously, would constitute the monumental paradox; 
who wishes pleasure must not wish for it. One would 
do the hard things of life to obtain its sweet things. 
This would be perhaps sounder philosophy, but the 
paradox remains, and its psychology is stultifying. For 
who would go in for the hard tasks of life with his 
eyes on the pleasant things of life? Pleasure-seeking 
is naturally a selfish affair, and thus bars the agent's 
way to share with or impart to others, it inclines to ex- 
clude sympathetic effort. Here the paradox appears 
again in the circumstance that those who as universal 
hedonism or the utilitarian ethics would set up for 
themselves "the greatest happiness of the greatest num- 
ber" are hindered by the amour-propre. Its charity 
begins at home to stay there. 

The paradox of hedonism becomes less apparent 
when a strongly materialistic standpoint is assumed. 
Then one may aim consciously at pleasure by whatever 
stimuli will gratify the senses. The crass pleasures, 



38 Theological Essays 

however, are least expressive of personality, and more 
of the animal order. Yet even these are only realized 
within limits, dependent as they are upon the phy- 
siological nature of the agent. These very safeguard- 
ing limits, however, are threatened by the pleasure in- 
dulgent agent. Thus appears another hedonistic para- 
dox in that the pleasure hunt is liable to outrun it- 
self, and defeat its purpose, entailing as it does, in- 
evitably discounting results. One must count the re- 
sults of the indulged gross pleasures against the pleas- 
ures themselves. 

In the rationale of an act, its consequences should 
be included, otherwise life would be treated as a piece- 
meal affair, which it evidently is not. Not only does 
the pleasure search of grosser nature, or even the most 
refined self-seeking entail discounting results, nay the 
very capacity for pleasure is limited, and is endangered 
by a free indulgence, which must result from setting up 
pleasure if not as an unintermittent, at least as the 
dominating aim of life. Thus the paradoxical warning 
sounds again: "He that seeks pleasure may lose it as 
an ultimate end," because physiological limitations for- 
bid. The pleasure principle must be stated in deference 
to these natural barriers. Strange that pleasure should 
be proclaimed a principle of life, when it thus runs 
counter to the nature both of body and mind. Could 
one even imagine such to be the case with virtue? 
Must not all this prattle about pleasure forever pale 
by the side of Christ's injunction: "Be ye therefore 
perfect even as your father which is in heaven is per- 
fect?" Unconditioned, unabated stands forever the 
law of life announced by Him who also declared: "I 
am the Way, the Truth and the Life." 

The plain truth of the matter is that hedonism has 
no real paradox at all A paradox is a seeming con- 



The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 39 

tradiction, but a truth in fact. Hedonism itself never 
announced a paradox. Instead the objections and diffi- 
culties which ever stand in the way of the pleasure 
theory were urged against hedonism. When life is 
turned into a pleasure pursuit the folly of hedonism 
becomes at once apparent. To maintain in the face 
of these facts hedonism as an ethical principle involved 
the contradictions which wrongly have been called 
paradoxes. They are misnomers, one and all. 

The Paradox is of Faith, but never Rationalistic. 
Moreover rational ethics have no place for the paradox. 
A paradox savors too much of the unexplained and un- 
explored. It belongs to the realm of faith to say: 
''credo quia ahsurdum, credo ut intelligam." The real 
paradox in ethics, however, is proclaimed by the au- 
thority of Christ himself. The Christian paradox: **He 
that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his 
life for my sake shall find it," is found with all four 
evangelists. 

The paradox occurs with hardly any modification. 
{Matthew 10:39; 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24; 
17*33; John 12:25). At the outset it should be ob- 
served that in strong contrast with rational ethics, 
Christian ethics commands human obedience not so 
much because the acceptance of the Christian rule 
promises to yield rich rewards to life — though it ful- 
fills life's aspirations beyond expectation — but rather 
because it assumes a rightful claim upon man. This 
claim, however, is to be answered freely and from the 
heart. Christ's power over man is not in the first place 
in what He promises unto man, but in what He asks 
of him. Motive and mainspring, standard and aim of 
all Christian endeavor remains forever God's holy will. 
In Christian ethics therefore is no place for bartering 



40 Theological Essays 

expediency. God will not have hirelings in his ser- 
vice. 

Calvin s Argument. Thus Calvin urged with in- 
sistent logic the weight of good works out of court as a 
consideration in man's salvation, declaring that man 
shall be saved, "Not without works, yet not by works." 

VIII. Biblical Content of the Christian 
Paradox 

The setting of the paradox makes it very explicit that 
Christ puts demands upon man. Prima facie He pre- 
sents to his followers the Christian life as unconditional, 
sacrificial devotion to Him. Immediately preceding the 
paradox Christ warns his disciples that they must not 
think of a life of ease and reward. 

Paradox in Matthew 10:39; 16:25. "Think not 
that I came to send peace on earth : I came not to send 
peace, but a sword ! For I come to set a man at variance 
against his father, and the daughter against her mother, 
and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law: 
and a man's foes shall be they of his own household. 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not 
worthy of me ; and he that loveth son or daughter more 
than me is not worthy of me. And he that doth not 
take his cross and follow after me, is not worthy of me." 
(Matthew 10:34-39). After this insistent and ex- 
treme demand, the reassuring paradox follows con- 
trasting the seemingly hard and uncompromising Chris- 
tian law of life with the soft moralities that lie so near 
the natural heart, of which the Pharisees and Scribes 
made so much then, as they do now. It sounds a warn- 
ing to the worldling, whilst it reassures the follower of 
Christ: "He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he 
that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." 



The Hedonistic and the Christian Paradox 41 

In a similar relation the paradox appears again in 
Matthew 16:25: "From that time began Jesus to shew 
unto his disciples how that he must go unto Jerusalem, 
and suffer many things of the elders and the chief 
priests and scribes, and be killed." When in connec- 
tion with the statement of the Lord's supreme sacrifice 
Peter retorts: "Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall 
never be unto thee." Christ rejects the worldly view- 
point which would avoid suffering sharply, saying 
unto Peter, "Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art a 
stumbling block unto me: for thou mindest not the 
things of God, but the things of men." "Then said 
Jesus unto his disciples, *If any man would come after 
me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and 
follow me.' " The demand is sacrifice unto death — 
as Christ was about to show it in His life — it is fore- 
going all the world's enjoyments, the breaking of 
worldly ties and relations, an unreserved, unconditional 
surrender of the heart's allegiance to come after Christ, 
to deny himself, to take up his cross, to follow him 
even unto death. It is a hard road to travel. But the 
reassurance of the King of the soul is, that he can 
and will deliver the soul "and what shall a man give 
in exchange for his soul?" The more insistent the 
paradox becomes. "For whosoever would save his life 
shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my 
sake shall find it." 

Paradox in Mark: S.-JS- In Mark the paradox has 
the same setting as in Matthew 10:25. It follows the 
incident of Peter's rebuke and Christ's subsequent ex- 
hortation to the disciples to prepare for sacrifice. It is 
useless to attempt another way. "For whosoever would 
save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his 
life for my sake and the gospel's shall save it." The 
affirmation follows which holds up the soul as of price- 



42 Theological Essays 

less value. Therefore worldly concerns should recede 
before the claims of Christ, who addresses himself to 
the soul. Life does not consist in the abundance of 
things a man possesses. 

Paradox in Luke: 9:24; 17:33. 'Tor what doth it 
profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his 
life?" The paradox is a similar setting in Luke 9:24. 

In Luke 17:33 the paradox is preceded by the men- 
tion of the judgment on the generation of Noah's day, 
and of Lot's, emphasizing the seriousness of the judg- 
ment attending our choice in reference "to the day that 
the Son of man is revealed." There must be no di- 
vided allegiance, no shrinking back into perdition. Re- 
member Lot's wife: ''whosoever shall seek to gain his 
life shall lose it: but whosoever shall lose his life shall 
preserve it." 

God and the Soul Necessary Basis of Ethics. In all 
these statements God and the soul are strikingly 
brought forward at the two supreme concerns of life. 
This circumstance is in singular contrast with ration- 
alistic ethics. Newman well observed, "I could not 
believe in my own existence without believing also in 
Him who lives as a personal, all-seeing, all-judging 
being in my conscience." God and the soul are the fac- 
tors in the ethical life which theologians consider pri- 
marily. When the soul is slighted, or God's claims are 
put out of sight, we are dealing with the world as it is 
not; we are left in a hard grinding causal nexus of 
mechanical procedure. But neither God, nor the soul, 
nor the world-order is thus explained. The able and 
candid scholar Romanes experienced this, and in the 
later years of his life retraced his steps, and recognized 
again the importance of the soul. Nietzsche reduces 
'das Seelendi7ig" to a "Begleiterscheinung.'' James 
concludes an essay: Does Consciousness Exist? with the 



The Hedonistic and- the Christian Paradox 43 

bold assertion that ''consciousness is but the faint rumor 
left behind the disappearing soul upon the air of phi- 
losophy." Professor Leuba in a recent inquiry of scien- 
tists regarding their belief in personal immortality, the 
corrolary of belief in the soul, was mostly answered in 
the negative. It shows how far the modern mind has 
grown away from the biblical standards of belief. What 
the modern mind treats as problematical, or even as 
non-existent is the cornerstone of Christian ethics in 
its biblical paradox. 

Before the soul-interests, worldly consideration must 
recede. There must be a willingness even to die, in 
order to live. Man's response to this extreme demand 
is rendered in faith. Abraham, the man of faith, re- 
ceived the promise of a large posterity against all ra- 
tional expectations. Again he rendered the supreme 
sacrifice in his willingness to offer up his son Isaac, the 
pledge on which this promise was dependent. Evidently 
rational ethics finds a stumbling block where the in- 
junction prevails, to die to live. 

Paradox in John: 12:25, In John's evangel this 
finds fitting illustration where the Christian paradox 
is preceded by the declaration: "Verily, verily, I say 
unto you. Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth 
and die, it abideth by itself alone ; but if it die it beareth 
much fruit." Thus Christ proclaims: ''He that loveth 
his life loseth it; and he that hateth his life in this 
world shall keep it unto life everlasting." 



DISCUSSIONS ON DAMNATION 

I. Present Day Tendency to Ignore this Par- 
ticular Subject 

TTT'HEN Dr. Parkhurst, of New York, declared in 
^^ plain terms in a sermon his belief in a punishment 
hereafter, there was considerable comment in the public 
journals on this unusual utterance. 

Plain statements are usually not indulged in when 
they declare disagreeable facts. It is more customary 
to shelve the cutting truth for the pleasant common- 
place, or sometimes for expedient falsehoods. Limp and 
lavender liberalism has well-nigh put out of sight the 
solemn things of future retribution. The ''new the- 
ologies," as conceited and puffed up as they are shallow 
and empty, have taught people to disbelieve in a God 
of justice. They are the outcome of a desire to put 
the serious elements of life out of sight. Austere and 
stern things are disagreeable intruders in lives of ease, 
pleasure, and plenty. The natural man dislikes them. 

Yet, in every life there come moments when solemn 
thoughts strike the most frivolous nature with awe at 
life's mystery, running with irreversible course to its 
destiny. The impression of the implacable power of 
death, the fear of judgment, yea, the fear of the Lord 
steals at times upon the most indifferent creatures. God 
has left His witness in the human heart. God Him- 
self says that the godless have no peace of soul (Isa. 
Ivii. 21 ). And the worldly-wise endeavor in vain to 
silence the inner voice of the heart. True is the re- 
mark of Felix Dahn: "Joy brings us to the pagan 
world, but pain and sorrow lead us back to Christ." 

In the midst of enjoyment, and in the frenzied search 
44 



Discussions on Damnation 45 

after happiness, then are intimations with us that we 
are not made for a butterfly existence. "Thou, O 
Lord, has created us unto Thy-self, and our hearts are 
restless within us, till they find rest in Thee!" In the 
wayward wanderings of undisciplined hearts the Au- 
gustinian cry rises with solemn warning. The injunc- 
tion of conscience against a grovelling existence in the 
lower things of sense and poorer things of time is an 
unwelcome reminder of the life that excels sense and 
outreaches time. The thought that "God hath set 
eternity in our hearts" (Eccles. iii. ii, American Stand. 
Rev.) must recede from the minds for the sake of un- 
disturbed and unhampered enjoyment of the world here 
and now. 

How significantly is the importance of the thought 
of the unseen future brought home in the pact of 
Goethe's Faust: 

Mephistopheles says: 

"I bind myself to be thy servant here^ 
To run and rest not at thy beck and bidding; 
And when we meet again in yonder place. 
There, in like manner, shalt thou be my servant." 

To which Faust replies: 

"That yonder place gives me but small concern; 
When thou hast first shattered this world to atoms, 
There may be others then, for aught I care. 
All joys, that I can feel, from this earth flow. 
And this sun shines upon my miseries!" 

Naturally, we wish diminished, the severity of re- 
ligious convictions concerning duty and obligation, 
right and wrong, and concerning the authority of the 



46 Theological Essays 

Unseen which places a strict and exacting task-master 
over our likes in this world. Thus it is that people 
want a God of such love as to humor a gain-saying and 
disobedient people in their wicked ways of selfish in- 
dulgence. If it were possible, all would naturally join 
in the sentiment of the Oriental unbeliever, Omar 
Khayyam : 

"Hush, he is a jolly good fellow, it will all be well;" 
or say with John Hay of the heroic Jim Bludso: 

"He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing, — 
And went for it thar and then; 
And Christ ain't a-going to be too hard 
On a man that died for men." 

The vendors of "new truths," as modern radicals 
love to style the disguised, perennial doubts and shal- 
low mutterings of a sceptical age, have acted the part 
of the Devil's Advocate for the church member of the 
average morality. They try to jest away the serious 
issues of life, and endeavor to sophisticate the accusa- 
tions of a guilty conscience. The unpopular truths of 
the Gospel are not emphasized, or they are even 
omitted. 

We are reminded of the remarks of Charles H that 
he could not think God would make a man miserable 
only for taking a little pleasure out of the way, and that 
virtue was simply a trick by which clever hypocrites 
imposed upon fools. 

Edwin D. Mead, Boston's ablest religious liberal, 
however, perceives the strength and power which the 
orthodox faith derives from this tenet of punitive jus- 
tice. He points out that "The God of Calvin, like the 
God of Jesus Christ, was a consuming fire, and the soul 
which alone can abide his coming is the soul that has 



Discussions on Damnation 47 

purified itself by self-control and self-denial, by dis- 
cipline and devotion. Struggle alone, desperate, per- 
sistent struggle, not drifting, could take one into the 
Kingdom of God. None of your easy feeling, that we 
are all sure to be taken care of somehow and that it 
will somehow be all right in the end. O, none of that 
decoying, devil's optimism for the Puritan. To him 
the way of life was indeed a straight and narrow way, 
life was a battlefield, his soul the theatre of a mighty 
conflict between the powers of light and the powers of 
darkness." We should observe however that in this 
appreciation of the orthodox, Mr. Mead betrays at the 
same time that he thinks their belief wholly a thing of 
the past. Thus those who have broken entirely with 
the Bible often give a more unbiased exegesis than most 
new theologies construct. The naked truth must be 
kept afar. 

Is it any wonder that many are to-day actually 
startled at the bare mention of the awful doom which 
awaits impenitent sinners? 

It is well known that the Lisbon earthquake supplied 
the theme of Voltaire's /Toem^ sur le desastre de Lis- 
honne." By it that deistic age was aroused to the dis- 
cussion of individual and universal responsibility. John 
Morley in his fine work on Voltaire observes, that 
"Voltaire protests against the delusion of forcing the 
course of the world's destiny into a moral formula that 
shall contain the terms of justice and mercy in their 
.human sense." He hurled this poem and his Candide 
against the easy-going optimism in which Leibnitz and 
Pope made light of the problem of evil. A theodicy 
which readily fitted everything into the best of possible 
worlds was a challenge which complacent deists put be- 
fore men in their day, and which pantheistic theories 
place before us now. One may observe in this con- 



48 Theological Essays 

nection the well-known statement of Campbell's New 
Theology to the effect that the life of the drunkard and 
the reprobate is only a mistaken quest after God. 

The highest arbiter in the case, the guilt-burdened 
conscience, however, pronounces this quest away from 
God, and not merely a mistake. Whether evil is treated 
as essential to finite being, or as an illusion, or its 
seriousness is minimized with an appeal to God's love, 
— in all these attitudes an effort is apparent to get rid 
of this vexing problem. If sin is considered a trifling 
thing, a ''misapplied desire," "unfortunate ignorance," 
or "pitiable weakness," or even "undeveloped good," 
and not a wilful defiance of, a deliberate disobedience 
to God, then surely such minor matters should not in- 
voke severe penalties from a God of love. 

I cannot help recalling the wholesome effect which 
a brilliant young student from over the sea. Rev. 
Guthrie, with his old-fashioned notion of sin, exerted 
in Yale Divinity School several years ago. It was after 
Dr. Lyman Abbott who had been lecturing there, had 
given his opinion, that in our modern age people had 
a consciousness of sins^ not of sin. He usually felt, 
if he could live a past day over again, he would live it 
precisely as he had done before. This liberal teacher 
has given the following exegesis of the well-known text, 
"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where 
moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break 
through and steal" : "And no sensible American does. 
Moth and rust do not get at Mr. Rockefeller's oil 
wells, nor at the Sugar Trust's sugar, and thieves do 
not often break through and steal a railway, or an 
insurance company, or a savings bank." 

Would Dr. Abbott give precisely this explanation 
over again, knowing that Upton Sinclair, of The 
Jungle, would attack his procedure ferociously, de- 



Discussions on Damnation 49 

manding space in The Outlook for a more literal in- 
terpretation, and the declaring: "Dr. Lyman Abbott 
has traduced and betrayed Jesus Christ by the most 
amazing piece of theological knavery that it has ever 
been my fortune to encounter?" He surely could save 
himself the trouble of hiding behind inane generalities, 
avoiding the point. 

In his recent book Reminiscences Lyman Abbot bares 
strikingly his ultra-radical, shallow modernism. In the 
preface he says: "I have written these reminiscences in 
the hope that the simple account of what one man, 
without pretension to either genius or notable scholar- 
ship, has been able to do in aiding his fellow-men to 
just conclusions and right action in troublous times, 
may be of use to others who, coming after him, will be 
called on to meet similar difficulties and solve similar 
problems." At the conclusion of the book he asks: 
"Ought we to go alway through life condemned of 
ourselves and thinking and feeling that God must con- 
demn us? ... . We may be self-approved and 
not self-satisfied. We may be dissatisfied and yet not 
self-condemned. . . . It is thus at eighty years of 
age that I look back upon the years that have passed 
since I imbibed something of the spirit of faith and 
hope and love in my grandfather's home in Farming- 
ton. I am far from satisfied with this review; but I 
am not self-condemned. I say to my Father, as I say 
to myself: *I have often been defeated, but I have 
fought the good fight ; I have often faltered and fallen, 
but I have kept up the race; I have been besieged all 
my life with doubts, and they still sometimes hammer 
at the gates, but I have kept my faith.' " 

To show how much better an appreciation the 
French deist had of the problem than most of our mod- 
ern theologians, we quote some characteristic parts : 



50 Theological Essays 

''Comment concevoir un Dieu, la bonte meme 
Qui prodigua ses biens a ses enfants qu il aime, 
Et qui versa sur eux les maux a pleines mains? 
Quel oeil peut penetrer dans ses profonds desseinsf 
II ne vient point d'autrui puisque Dieu seul est mattre, 
De Vetre tout parfait le mal ne pouvait naitre. 
II existe pourtant. O tristes verites! 
O melange etonnant de contrarietes! 
Aux cris demi-formes de leurs voix expirantes, 
Au spectacle ejfrayant de leurs cendres fum antes, 
Direz-vous: C'est Veffet des eternelles lois_, 
Qui d'un Dieu libre et bon necessitent le choix? 
Direz-vouSj en voyant cet amas de victimes: 
Dieu s'est venge, leur mort est le prix de leurs crimes? 
Quel crime, quelle faute out commis ces enfants 
Sur le sein maternel ecrases et sanglants? 
LisbonnCj qui nest plus, eut-elle plus de vices 
Que LondreSj que Paris, plonges dans les delices? 
Lisbonne est abimee, et Von danse a Paris. 

The Rev. Dr. Parkhurst said, in the sermon referred 
to above: "The God of love in 1755 destroyed 50,000 
persons in the Lisbon earthquake. If a man will not 
accept God's moral laws, then I should say that God 
will damn him; and I further say that God ought to 
damn him. If God burns up a body he will burn up a 
soul that gets in the way of his moral laws." 

This expresses in plain, homely speech the traditional 
belief of Christian people, who surely have shown that 
they were not made of stone. One may even say that 
they were the more loving and tender for this belief in 
God's unflinching justice, while yet they recognized 
His love and goodness. For as God's justice is to be 
feared, so is His goodness to be loved. Goethe well 
said: "There is no protection against excellence ex- 



Discussions on Damnation 51 

cept Love." The wise man said: "The fear of the 
Lord is the beginning of wisdom ;" and love is its con- 
clusion, the fulfilment of the Law. Therefore, "If you 
wish to flee from God, flee to God." 

How true are the appealing words of the unhappy 
Chatterton when he poured out his soul in the sad 
struggles of his young life : 

"Oh, teach me in the trying hour. 

When anguish swells the dewy tear, 
To still my sorrows, own thy power, 
Thy goodness love, thy justice fear!" 

The wisdom of the world is of a kind which does 
not fear the Lord. Its considerations are concerned 
with the things seen. The actual doings af men are 
the standard for the man of the world. He chooses 
rather to follow the opinions of men than to obey the 
dictates of conscience. 

The natural man will not acknowledge restraint. 
Such men proclaim themselves emancipated, and are 
freed even from the most delicate sense of awe. In 
some of these circles of unbelieving emancipationists, 
even the lenient moral restrictions of men as they go, 
to which Psalm I refers, are set aside. But let none 
forget that, instead of yielding to the restraint of fear 
of the Lord and His awe, the swaggering, blaspheming 
infidels cow in the most degrading manner under the 
conventional codes of men! Reversing the Biblical in- 
junction, they are more obedient unto men than unto 
God. And so they fear men more than God, in spite 
of the Saviour's warning words, that they should rather 
fear Him who can destroy the soul as well as the body. 



52 Theological Essays 

II. Reasons in the Influence of a Perverted 
Zeitgeist 

In this matter much depends on the temper of the 
age. Our standpoint determines largely our approach 
to this question. Twenty years or more ago Joseph 
Cook, one of America's ablest lecturers, declared em- 
phatically and impressively: "If you please, the uni- 
verse is more serious than is dreamed by men who 
solace sin by affirming that it never can be too late to 
mend, and that character does not tend to a free final 
permanence, bad as well as good. That sentiment is a 
web woven in the looms of luxury, and gilded there, 
but one that will not bear the weight of absolute seri- 
ousness, conducting research by the scientific method. 
Whatever outrages science will be found to solace sin." 

Bishop Butler well said : **Thus nothing can possibly 
be more contrary to nature than vice." 

The sinning world pays a tribute and an exacted 
sacrifice to God's glory far more awful than those who 
offer their days in His voluntary service. 

Yet, I remember the gifted and manly orator of the 
Boston South Congregational Church, Rev. Dr. George 
Gordon, arraigning the Calvinistic system of presenting 
the wrath-side of God's nature equally with the love- 
side to unconverted men. Evidently Dr. Gordon was 
forgetful of the universal significance and profound 
truth in the dictum of Lucretius: "It was fear that 
first made gods in the world." It is the old story over 
again — one inevitably finds what one is looking for. 
The times require a God of love at the expense of jus- 
tice and equity. 

But it is a foolish begging of the question to say: 
"I do not want to believe in a God who will damn the 
finally impenitent sinner. I do not believe, and I 



Discussions on Damnation 53 

could not believe, in such a God." There is no argu- 
ment in this. Simply a disposition expressed does not 
decide much about the truth of the matter. And that 
should be our concern. Subjectiveness has, however, 
bold presumption in an age in which the man-side of 
religion is over-emphasized. 

Perhaps this is the main reason why Pauline the- 
ology is so distasteful to the modern mind. Paul's 
rugged logic argues the futility of human claims and 
efforts before God's sovereignty, and presents salvation 
as grace. "Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest 
against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that 
formed it, Why didst thou make me thus?" 

Professor James in his Pragmatism (p. 23 f.) ridi- 
cules the theodicy of Leibnitz in regard to the damned, 
mainly on the score that man is too important "to be 
thrown as sop to the eternal fitness." "It is evident," 
he says, "that no realistic image of the experience of 
a damned soul ever had approached the portals of 
Leibnitz's mind." We want to direct attention, how- 
ever, to the circumstance that Professor James is quite 
willing to pay this price in behalf of his pluralistic 
melioristic scheme. In theoretic vagueness he pleads 
(p. 295) : "May not the notion of a world already 
saved in toto anyhow, be too saccharine to stand ? May 
not religious optimism be too idyllic? Must all be 
saved? Is no price to be paid in the work of salva- 
tion?" "I find myself willing to take the universe to 
be really dangerous and adventurous." "Those Puri- 
tans who answered *y^s' to the question : Are you will- 
ing to be damned for God's glory? were in this ob- 
jective and magnanimous condition of mind." We 
would observe, however, that this temper does not 
obtain among liberal minds, and that even those Puri- 
tans were not likely to stake so much on the insecure 



54 Theological Essays 

scheme of pragmatism. Self-regard and utility do not 
cultivate that magnanimous temper, nor furnish the 
basis for a belief which would stake own dear self. 

In proportion as God is our main concern we will 
be less concerned about the opinions of men. He who 
fears God does not fear men, whilst he who stands in 
fear of man can not obey God. To be truly obedient 
unto God is to be supreme over men. Obedience to 
the world tends to create a God in agreement with its 
doings. When man feels small, God looms up large; 
when man feels big, God loses His awful majesty. 
The moods of men differ, and the impress of God upon 
their minds differs accordingly. 

There is, indeed, a valuation by man even of God. 
A free, moral agent he is, with personal responsibility 
to a personal God. So far as he responds does he 
recognize himself as responsible. But exactly on this 
score it can not therefore be only a question of sub- 
jective appreciation. Value-judgments must have ob- 
jective reference corresponding to our subjective sus- 
ceptibility. Dorner expresses, profoundly and truly, 
the quintessence of Christianity when he says, in his 
great classic On the Person of Christ (vol. HI, p. 

235): 

*'The idea of the world as it stands eternally before 
God is not terminated and completed with suscepti- 
bility to God, but, according to his unfathomable graci- 
ous will, includes also that this susceptibility be ab- 
solutely filled in itself ; and, at the point where the cen- 
tral fulfilment corresponding to the central suscepti- 
bility takes place, the world, too — which, as merely sus- 
ceptible to God, or even sinful, was outside of God, — 
entered into the circle of Divine Life, into the life of 
the triune God himself, even as the immanent Divine 
Life explicated itself here." 



Discussions on Damnation 55 

It is quite in order to remind the sentimental preach- 
er of to-day that his subjective valuation is rather un- 
reliable with no other basis than his exhibit of moral, 
or sometimes immoral, character. 

The Rev. Clayton J. Potter, an able Congregational 
minister, once delivered an impressive sermon on this 
point from the text which enjoins man against the mak- 
ing of graven images, and on Isaiah's denouncing with 
scathing ridicule the making of idols. He showed most 
convincingly how this idolatry of shaping one's God 
is prevalent now. The stern features, forbidding to 
human weakness and self-indulgence, are eliminated 
from the idea of God. People make the very teachings 
of Christianity fit in with their desire. They com- 
promise the qualities of Christianity. Yet, we are not 
to fashion our God as we would have Him, but we are 
to accept Him as He comes to us objectively. 

Such a sermonic appeal is, however, in more than 
one way exceptional in the New England Congrega- 
tionalism of to-day. The general tone is rather a 
tactful catering to the good-will of people of respecta- 
bility, flavored with emotional religious feeling. The 
liberal preacher is suave, oratorical, of good diction, 
and literary, sometimes demonstrative in delivery, but 
almost always an artful dodger of all issues and angular 
situations. He makes the very God a reflection of his 
moods and furnishes an illustration to the dictum of the 
pagan-poet Goethe, that one fashions his God after 
himself, 

''Wie einer ist, so ist sein Gott; 
Darum ward Gott so oft zu Spott." 

Goethe himself furnishes a striking illustration of the 
phases of belief in God's punitive righteousness. Most 



56 Theological Essays 

competent commentators on his Faust take it to be a 
fact that the gifted, dissolute youth had such intima- 
tions of his evil doings as to depict himself in the first 
part of the drama as lost. Only later, when more en- 
grossed in worldly pleasures and less sensitive to the 
solemn warnings of conscience, did he join the second 
part to it, as a continuation of the Faust who had sown 
his wild oats, but was to redeem himself as — 

"The active, ever-striving soul 
Works out his own salvation." 

Browning's Easter Day leaves us with a closing note 
of hope. Solemn things are not to be hastily invoked 
upon another's course: 

"But Easter Day Breaks. But 
Christ rises! Mercy every way 
Is infinite, and who can say?" 

Yet, in the poem it is made clear how the grovelling 
soul is left to its desires, unrestrained by God's Spirit. 
He who might have judged that the use of the flesh 
was to refine the nerve beneath the spirit's play, who 
might have followed "the spirit's fugitive gleams until 
they issued in the unveiled light of God," has fixed 
himself, where "God's free Spirit that makes an end" 
no longer penetrates. The crux of the whole poem is 
in the lines : 

"I promise not thou shalt forget 
The past now gone to its account. 
But leave thee with the old amount 
Of faculties, nor less nor more, 
Unvisited as heretofore 
By God's free Spirit that makes an end." 



Discussions on Damnation 57 

Realizing the soul's undying nature, we are made to 
feel, that "as we are making it now so will it start be- 
yond death with larger powers, a greater scope, an un- 
forgotten past." 

In our busily engaged modern life, when the religi- 
ous stock seems dying out ; when the small philosophers 
scoff at Jonathan Edwards, that master spirit of the 
"Great Awakening" in New England, because he wrote 
a sermon on Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God — 
in our age there is little sympathy with the disclosure 
of the grave things of life. Yet, who can oppose the 
inevitable, who can debar the truth from access to the 
soul, or who suppress the facts of our own conscious- 
ness? 

It may seem strange at first that Dante's picture of 
hell calls out little antagonism from the public, that 
Rubens's wonderful canvasses in the Pinakothek in 
Munich on the subject of "Hollensturz'' find admiring 
observers, as do many art-productions on judgment. 
Yet when we remember the difference between a pic- 
torial representation and an argued, intellectual ap- 
prehension of the dreaded theme which forces its 
thought with compelling realization home to those 
whose mind is engaged by the subject, we need wonder 
no more. 

I shall long remember the profound impression made 
by an address in Marquand Chapel by Professor Ed- 
ward Curtis — when the students said yea to his solemn 
proclamation with sincere earnestness: "We believe in 
hell and we ought to preach it!" Alas, few resolved to 
pass on the old-time solemn warning. It does not sound 
up-to-date to preach the things that "no one believes 
any more." 

An apt and perfectly analogous rejoinder to this 
argument against old-time beliefs would be to say that 



58 Theological Essays 

up-to-date, newfangled notions and theologies are to 
be discredited because the little babies do not believe 
them yet! For in these matters much as to actual be- 
lief depends on the temperament and disposition. Nev- 
ertheless, as truth Is the primary concern, the truth on 
this most momentous question of human destiny ought 
to be brought forward with utmost distinctness, and 
pressed with arguments that can not be gainsaid. 

III. Reasoned Argument of the Subject 

When the current opinion — it is not an argument — 
Is announced, that someone or other "can not believe in 
a God who punishes the Impenitent sinners with eternal 
damnation," the assertion is usually illustrated by the 
analogy of an earthly father. We direct special atten- 
tion to this often adduced comparison of God's punish- 
ment with the punishment of a disobedient child by an 
earthly father. 

We may pass by the inconsistency, that those who 
illustrate thus their belief or opinion usually object to 
anthropomorphic descriptions of God, of their own use 
of which this is a most flagrant instance. But we press 
the point that the supposed analogy begs the question, 
In assuming to know the relation which It proposes to 
explain. 

In the comparison we are supposed to be the children, 
and therefore must hold to the relation of the child- 
mind to the disposition of his offended father; and we 
can not argue from this position what the heavenly 
father, taking (on the strength of our comparison) the 
parental attitude, would do, or would not do. The 
actual sentiment of the child should be the key in this 
interpretation, which is that he expects to be punished 
for wrong-doing. We take for granted here that we 



Discussions on Damnation 59 

are agreed, that in education, along with the cultivation 
of positive principles, restraining influence is needed. 

Now, parents who do not teach their children "to 
mind," who always humor their wills and never punish ; 
rear "spoiled children." "Whom the Lord loveth He 
chasteneth" is the Biblical principle regarding the 
Heavenly Father. 

We know as a fact that disobedient children cast 
about in their minds, as a protection in contemplated 
wrong, that father, mother, or teacher will not say, or 
do anything about it. The evil companion makes his 
plea for wrong-doing on the same score. Now, to 
argue thus from the actions of the indulgent, sinful, 
earthly father towards his children is by a confusion 
of the terms of the comparison, to assume this to be 
God's attitude towards His children. In strict keeping 
with the comparison, we can presume to judge God's 
dealings in his punitive justice even less than can a 
child the punishments of his earthly father. But we 
know that as a certainty both do punish. 

So there is in the human heart a deep-lying, un- 
sophisticated sentiment that sin not only is punished — 
which we can not always see in this world — but that it 
ought to be punished. Divine justice may challenge 
faith, but facing facts squarely, we can only render the 
verdict that God has written doom and damnation for 
sin and sinners. Men who lead indulgent lives of 
sinfulness, which forebode awful consequences, may 
deny the justice of God, and presume to abuse His in- 
finite love with impunity, but it is after all merely prac- 
tising the foolish trick of the ostrich. All the world 
echoes the pangs of misery, the groans of evil-doing. 
Pain and destruction wait on all, and everything that 
gets in the mills of God will find them, though grind- 
ing slowly, yet grinding exceedingly small. 



6o Theological Essays 

If the belief in God on the part of the man who urges 
this false analogy is as real and deep as he will insist 
that it is, he affirms God to be a God of love, and will 
acknowledge none other. Yea, if this were possible, 
his God is to be even love without justice. Then how 
is it that this God can allow so much misery in the 
world, so much of pain and agony? All theories deny- 
ing eternal punishment are thus obliged to fly in the 
face of this awful fact. Indeed, the denial of belief 
in God's punitive justice, because of His love, involves 
on the selfsame ground the denial of the existence of 
evil. 

Tennyson proclaimed that — 

"Nature red in tooth and claw 
With ravin shrieks against such creed," 

the creed that God is love at the cost of justice. 

The modern unbeliever is forced to revert to and fall 
back upon the Malthusian theory which teaches that 
nature settles her accounts with rigid severity, in piti- 
less manner adjusting the eaters to the food-supply. 
If he is honestly placing the responsibility for these 
facts on his God of love, who is not to exercise justice, 
one may leave with Him the fact of punishment with 
much more unconcern. But logically, he in reality 
leaves God out of account in the matters of this world. 

Guy de Maupassant forces this fact with mocking 
sarcasm to the front, and holds it tauntingly before 
timid modernism, which ignores the solemn, hard facts 
to give itself to a sentimental dreaming of love without 
justice. Upon the last page of his last novel, UAngelus, 
he makes a blasphemous charge to ''Dieu eternel 
meurtrier qui semble ne gouter le plaisir de produire 
que pour savourer insatiablement sa passion acharnee 



Discussions on Damnation 6l 

de tuer de nouveau, de recommencer ses exterminations 
a mesure qu il cree des etres.'' . . . " Au milieu 
de cette phrase" his literary editor, Louis Conard, tells 
us, ''son genie a sombre, Depuis Guy de Maupassant 
n a plus rien ecrit» Le blaspheme a ete interrompu par 
la folieJ" 

Richard Le Gallienne directs attention to the fact 
of pain and suffering in his // I Were God. Harriet 
Beecher Stowe gives the following reflections in The 
Minister s Wooing: "They thought it a very happy 
world before, — a glorious universe. Now it is darken- 
ed with the shadow of insoluble mysteries. Why this 
everlasting tramp of inevitable laws on quivering life? 
If the wheels must roll, why must the crushed be so 
living and sensitive?" She makes Mrs. Marvin at the 
supposed death of her son James exclaim: "Mary, I 
cannot, will not, be resigned! — it is all hard, unjust, 
cruel ! to all eternity I will say so. To me there is no 
goodness, no justice, no mercy in anything! Life seems 
to me the most tremendous doom that can be inflicted 
on a helpless being! What had we done that it should 
be sent upon us? Why were we made to love so, to 
hope so — our hearts so full of feeling, and all the laws 
of nature marching over us — never stopping for our 
agony? Why, we can suffer so in this life that we had 
better never have been born!" "Do I not see the same 
difficulty in Nature? I see everywhere a Being whose 
main ends seem to be beneficent, but whose good pur- 
poses are worked out at terrible expense of suffering, 
and apparently by the total sacrifice of myriads of 
sensitive creatures. I see unflinching order, general 
good-will, but no sympathy, no mercy. Storms, earth- 
quakes, volcanoes, sickness, death, go on without re- 
garding us. Everywhere I see the most hopeless, un- 
relieved suffering, — and for aught I see it may be 



62 Theological Essays 

eternal. Immortality is a dreadful chance, and I would 
rather never have been." **But if there is a fathomless 
mystery of sin and sorrow, there is a deeper mystery of 
God's love." Similar sentiments and argumentation, 
abounding in literature and life, in every form and de- 
gree, should make plain that the fact of suffering and 
pain as well as evil finds ready acknowledgment, to- 
gether with that of the existence of God. 

A Universalist minister said, in answer to the dec- 
laration that God destroyed 50,000 people in the Lis- 
bon earthquake: *'I deny it. These human beings were 
killed because the great physical laws must go on. 
There is no divine interference, and, I say it reverently, 
there can be no interference. God even has his metes 
and bounds." 

This is a deistic position, with the additional limita- 
tions put upon God's power; it practically affirms that 
things are fixed once for all. God not merely just 
beholds the world's course, but, we are told, that He 
could not interfere. He is bound to the great physical 
laws. But, as modern explanations go, He does the 
best under the circumstances, with the means available. 
As if every last circumstance and factor was not created 
and controlled by God Almighty! In corroboration, 
the Agnostic Huxley is quoted: "The Ledger of the 
Almighty is strictly kept, and every one of us has the 
balance of his operations paid over to him at the end 
of every minute of his existence." It is asked : "Can 
we believe that, in addition to this punishment, God 
will burn up the erring soul in the fires of an eternal 
hell? What would be a crime for me would be a 
crime for God!" 

In this argument we start with the view of an im- 
personal, natural force, which the agnostic physicist 
acknowledges, with a Nature written large as God- 



Discussions on Damnation 63 

idea, and then turn, in conclusion, to the sounder con- 
ception of the personal God of Christian faith, pro- 
jected, however, according to wish rather than found. 

Two remarks may be made in this connection. It is 
at least acknowledged that he who gets in the way of 
God's moral laws will get into trouble to-day and 
here. Why should there be made such an illogical, 
sudden break with the sin-stricken man of this world 
when he passes on ; especially by those who trumpet the 
evolutionary doctrines as the gospel of to-day? Is 
there, then, not with the soul as well eternal unfold- 
ing, unceasing growth, gradual progress, a steady de- 
velopment? It is a confused notion to treat life be- 
fore and after death as two unrelated or not conjoined 
entities. 

It deserves special notice that this assumed total 
disruption, not only with the former earthly life, but 
also rejection of continued identity, or a lurking dis- 
belief in life after death, turns the fact of punishment 
in this world for most people into an argument against 
the case to which it bears so plainly witness, viz. : eter- 
nal judgment. It is, indeed, the same soul that is 
damned or saved, and punishments are not outward 
conditions, but refer to the soul-condition itself. 

On every hand one may hear the otherwise stultify- 
ing remark: *'A man gets all that's coming to him here, 
and need not wait for a hell or heaven to come after." 
Unless the unwarranted and unintended assumption of 
the mortality of souls, as in conditional immortality, is 
made or implied, such remarks are wholly unmeaning. 
Omar Khayyam's tirade, in view of the above, is cor- 
roborative of eternal damnation: 

"I sent my soul through the Invisible, 
Some message of that after-life to spell, 



64 Theological Essays 

And by and by my soul came back to me and said, 
I myself am Heaven and Hell." 

Cumberland said: "Pain and penalties — as well as 
also privileges and immunities — are always annexed to 
laws by the authority which establishes and enacts 
them. The real obligation of the law arises from the 
will of some superior." 

In a negative way, therefore, as concomitant signs of 
God's pleasure or disfavor, results attendant upon our 
actions do point out right and wrong conduct to man- 
kind, as restraining influence by an anticipation of good 
or evil consequences. Those who do not heed these 
consequences throughout life, shall have a realization 
to the full after death. 

It is urged often that the Reformers emphasized too 
strongly the penalties and rewards to be administered 
by the Sovereign God after death, wholly out of pro- 
portion to those inflicted in this life. But so they are. 
Our hearts condemn us, and God is greater than our 
hearts. Whatever arguments may be drawn from one- 
sided, morbid brooding about being in a state of dam- 
nation, it is certain that nowadays sin is mostly treated 
as a matter of consciousness without so much as a 
reference to its deeper source in the corruption of na- 
ture. 

The objection is made that selfishness is made too 
prominent, when fear of punishment and hope of re- 
ward are presented as motives to Christian faith, a 
selfishness which naturally results from this belief in 
hell and heaven, eternal torment, and everlasting bliss. 
We observe, however, that they are not motives; the 
fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, not the 
wisdom itself. They are inducements and considera- 
tions for the natural man to turn to the straight gate 



Discussions on Damnation 65 

and to follow the narrow way ; leading to piety, but not 
a part of it. 

Yet, why not rather raise this objection to hedonistic 
and utilitarian ethics, the prudential wisdom of the 
world? Surely they involve self-regard as the leading 
motive. These considerations of self in given sur- 
roundings, even if they did enter also into the Christian 
life, fall infinitely below the alleged selfish regard of 
Christians, who in their motives at least try to please 
a perfect personality, God; whereas the hedonistic and 
utilitarian selfishness is like the jelly-fish reacting on 
outward stimuli. 

Those who, in spite of God's visiting spirit, have 
soiled and tainted their souls win selfish baseness and 
lust, and with all their heart, not from weakness, but 
in defiance of God, are glorying in their shame, are, 
when the curtain drops on the earthly scene, in the 
hands of God Almighty. What about justice? What 
about the idea of law, inerring, inevitably sure? Ham- 
let speaks truly of "the undiscovered country from 
whose bourn no traveller returns." But by analogy, 
as there are rewards and punishments here, so there will 
be hereafter, and that eternal. 

Joseph Cook observed in Current Religious Perils: 

"Robert Browning, who is unquestionably the sub- 
tlest of the ethical teachers which the poetry of our 
age has produced, deliberately affirms that our human, 
earthly choice decides our eternal destiny. He is not 
a theological partisan. He speaks as Shakespeare 
would, as a student of the irreversible laws under which 
character tends to final permanence, good or evil." 

"Would a man escape the rod, 
See that he turn to God 
The day before his death. 



66 Theological Essays 

Or, could a man inquire 
When it shall come, I say, 
Then let him turn to-day." 

From Ben Karshook's Wisdom 

Joseph Cook himself renders these reflections well in 
the following lines : 

"Choose I must, and soon must choose 
Holiness, or heaven lose. 
While what heaven loves I hate 
Closed for me is heaven's gate. 
Endless sin means endless woe; 
Into endless sin I go, 
If my soul, from reason rent, 
Takes from sin its final bent. 
Balance lost, but not regained. 
Final bent is soon attained. 
Fate is choice in fullest flower, 
Man is flexile — for an hour! 
As the stream the channel grooves. 
And within that channel moves. 
So doth habit's deepest tide 
Groove its bed, and there abide. 
Light obeyed increaseth lights 
Light resisted bringeth night. 
Who shall give me will to choose. 
If the love of Light I lose? 
Speed my soul ; this instant yield ; 
Let the Light its scepter wield. 
While thy God prolongeth grace 
Haste thee towards His holy face." 

The attempt is constantly made to dull the sense of 
responsibility for the issues of life; but the issues of 



Discussions on Damnation 67 

life immortal are not to be coaxed into terrible delusion 
by the word "chance," ''another chance;" when exactly 
that word has no longer any application: "As a tree 
falleth, so it shall lie." 

Chances, always new chances, even beyond the grave ! 
As if they ask for chances merely to lose them. As they 
ask for a loving God just to abuse His love! But with 
cumulative effect evil conducts a career, works out 
destiny, more and more towards fixity. We have read 
life's history well enough to see that even here already 
chances may have gone irrevocably beyond all human 
power, and only tears remain for meat. Lives are 
being lost here and now, out of reach of human help. 
The sociologists speak of "the submerged tenth," ac- 
tually sunk so low below the level of common decency 
that "they cannot reach bottom." They are adrift 
on the tides of their iniquity. Philanthropy and Chris- 
tian charity seem to spend their loving efforts in vain. 
Already reality of what Dante wrote in significant 
words over his hell appears : 

"All hope abandon, ye who enter here!" 

It has been argued that salvation viewed as an escape 
from hell is rather a negative idea, and inadequate for 
the scope of the Gospel. Salvation from a damnable 
state and condition is meant, rather than from its dire 
consequences. In that light salvation is positive as 
well as negative; saved from hell means saved for 
heaven. 

We should bear in mind here the close relation 
between a sinful life and the refusal of God's grace. 
"The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit 
of God; for they are foolishness unto him, and he can 
not know them, because they are spiritually judged." 
We should remember that precisely refusal of God's 



68 Theological Essays 

grace results from the sinful condition of heart, and 
may be viewed in itself punishment, as estrangement 
from God. The evangelist Moody affirmed that no 
one is damned because of his sins, but because of his 
not accepting Christ as his Saviour. The evangelist 
misstates the case in zealous appeal by overemphasis of 
Isaiah's plea: ''Come now, and let us reason together, 
saith the Lord ; though your sins be as scarlet, they 
shall be as white as snow; though they be red like 
crimson, they shall be as wool." It should be borne 
also in mind, however, that the prerequisite for know- 
ing God is to live a God-like life, to become Christ- 
like is to like Christ; just as to like Christ above all 
else is to become Christlike. John the evangelist sig- 
nificantly states: "If any man will do his will, he shall 
know of the doctrine ; whether it be of God, or whether 
I speak of myself." The Bible teaches plainly that a 
man is damned always because of his inherent and ad- 
herent sin. Yet, faith in God's grace, the imputed 
righteousness of Christ blots out these sins, as if they 
had not been. Therefore "How shall we escape, if we 
neglect so great a salvation?" The burden of the 
Gospel is, in fact, that in Christ is the remaking of 
ruined man. Man, not accepting Christ as his Saviour, 
shows thereby the sinful condition of his heart, rather 
than this being the cause of his damnation; but he is 
damned because of his sinful state. Both points of 
Moody's statement are therefore in error. 

"I will put my laws into their mind 
And on their heart also will I write them; 
For I will be merciful to their iniquities 
And their sins will I remember no more." 

In addition to the belief that impenitent sinners will 
be damned, there is often need of attention to that 



Discussions on Damnation 69 

other inherent belief that they ought to be damned. It 
was the great philosopher Kant who sustained **the 
thought of God" by the inherent, native sense which 
man has, that each shall get his own. God was for 
him the necessary postulate to establish the relation be- 
tween happiness and virtue. Just as good awaits its 
reward, so evil will not go unpunished. We require 
a God to see to this, such is in substance Kant's argu- 
ment. Is there no suggestion in it for eternal retribu- 
tion? "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall be also 
reap." "Whosoever transgresses must suffer," and 
"the way of the transgressor is hard." Ingrained in the 
very structure of the world is God's law, that evil shall 
not have a permanent stay. 

We point here to the comfort of the thought that 
the world-government is in the hands of Almighty God, 
even though it involves a judgment from which there 
is no appeal, standing as we do before the Judge to 
whom there is no reply. The thought that after all, 
absolute equity is being done in the midst of the world's 
seemingly bewildering distribution of fortunes encour- 
ages and cheers the wise in his earthly struggles for the 
side of the world's Judge. God's judgments are in- 
fallible and unfailing. He who knows the hearts holds 
the balance of justice. Each shall get his own under 
Divine dispensation. Thus we may leave all to Him, 
unlike that Universalist minister whose stock in trade 
was to inveigh against the ideas of God's punitive 
justice, but who suddenly forgot all his theories, when 
he learned that some young sinner had betrayed his 
own daughter. "That man ought to be damned in 
hell!" he exclaimed. When it was observed that he 
had always taught there was no such thing as hell and 
damnation, he retorted in anger, "For such rascals 
there ought to be hell and damnation." The incident 



70 Theological Essays 

illustrates how naturally the idea of punishment leaps 
forward, when the heinousness of sin is brought home 
to humans, how natural then, not only to hate sin, but 
the sinner. Sin cannot very well be visited without 
inflicting punishment upon the sinner. 

The Rev. Dr. Parkhurst, in expressing his belief in 
"damnation," added the statement: "And I further 
would say that God ought to damn the impenitent 
sinners." 

There is, indeed, a justifiable mood, which does feel 
satisfaction in seeing sin visited by the wrath of a 
righteous God. Against the sceptic who disbelieves in 
God because of the terrible suffering in the world, it 
may be asserted with quite as much reason, that this 
awful suffering and misery argues the proof of God's 
existence. It is the sacrifice of the unconverted, of the 
wayward, of the sinners to God. He will not bestow 
His blessings till we do His holy will. And we do it 
not. Who is there to deny that? The concern about 
our souls, and our stand before God might well re- 
place our petty anxieties about worldly matters. The 
modern man needs a little more Gottanschauung and 
less Weltanschauung. Only thus might self-secure 
moralists learn what it means "to be plucked as a brand 
from the burning." 

When a gainsaying and disobedient people raise this 
insoluble question, Why did God allow mankind to 
fall in Adam? Rom. v. 20, is a pertinent rejoinder: 
"Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." 
Or, we should with practical insistence declare God's 
"Whosoever will!" and call to mind the utter free- 
dom under which man marks out his own course, being, 
so far as his will is concerned, unrestrained. Evil and 
good are of his own choosing; and so must be accepted 
the consequences : "The wages of sin is death." 



Discussions on Damnation 71 

We can not consider evil to issue from God, who 
is of too pure eyes to behold it; nor can we give it in- 
dependent co-existence with God. Attempts at a uni- 
tary conception, or at systematic explanation, may not 
make us lose sight of the unmistakable facts of con- 
sciousness. If consistency would force upon us such a 
procedure it would indeed be a bugbear of small minds. 
Such a procedure seems, however, to be advocated by 
C. C. Haskell, D. D., author of the New Theology, 
whose crude notions equal the crass ignorance of his 
theological discussion and discrimination. He says in 
an article: "God's power is limited, hence we have 
Satan, sin and suffering. There are two kinds of 
punishments, what God inflicts, as corrective, and what 
Satan inflicts for his own delight. God's power being 
limited He can save the one close to Him, much easier 
than he can the one at a distance." 

It is needless to comment, since among intelligent 
readers no one is inclined to take such unscientific 
twaddle seriously. We may leave these cut-and-dried, 
popular notions with their author in "Corry," where 
they had better remain. Unfortunately much of pre- 
cisely such superficial explanation catches the crowd, 
and wins for itself an importance in an unbelieving 
democracy which it does not merit in itself. With 
many people the phrase rules ; the plausible rather than 
the true often captures the multitude. 

IV. On Judgment in General 

It hardly can be denied that the belief in damnation 
has been abused in its application. The belief is rather 
for solemn, individual warning than for a ready ap- 
plication to others. God is judge, and knows the 
hearts. The words of Newton are worth remembering 



72 Theological Essays 

in this connection: "If ever I shall get into heaven I 
shall wonder at three things: I that so many will not 
be there whom I expected surely to find there; II that 
so many will be there whom I thought would never 
get there; and III the greatest marvel will be that I, 
poor sinner, should be the recipient of so^much grace 
as to be admitted." 

The severity of eternal damnation is also always con- 
trasted and offset by the loving appeal: "How shall 
we escape, if we neglect so great salvation!" 

The most flagrant anomaly in the discussions of this 
subject by liberals is that they insistently charge the be- 
liever in God's punitive justice with cruelty. What- 
ever they may argue in regard to the fact of punish- 
ment, they ought to recognize the circumstance that 
where God's judgment is so prominently brought for- 
ward human judgment naturally recedes. It tempers 
our condemnatory spirit, our fretful, meddling dis- 
position to interfere with persons and things. We 
then do not want — as in the case of the Universalist 
minister — to get first of all at the offender with im- 
passioned hatred against the sinner rather than against 
sin. We then come to understand : "Avenge not your- 
selves, beloved, but give place unto wrath : for it is 
written, 'Vengeance belongeth unto me; I will recom- 
pense, saith the Lord.' " When a loving God's judg- 
ment in justice damns — the condemnation stands with- 
out appeal forever. And though this may be of awe- 
inspiring solemnity, it delivers us from the fickle, faulty 
human judgment. "Each one of us shall give account 
of himself to God. Let us not, therefore, judge one 
another any more." I am persuaded that those who 
believe in judgment have less reason for condemnatory 
judging than those have who, disbelieving in the wrath 
of God, seem to usurp God's function to themselves. 



Discussions on Damnation 73 

We all have to learn charitable judgment. For 
Christian living we must be taught "Judge not that ye 
be not judged." This utterance does not refer so much 
to the correctness of judgment as to the charity of its 
spirit. A man is known in his judgments. Indeed, 
"as a man thinketh in his heart so is he." A man may 
be better known by what he says about others than by 
what others say about him. These judgments, how- 
ever, generally concur. Thus the addition: "for with 
what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged," which 
enforces the command to judge charitably. We are 
called upon to reflect on the rebound from our judg- 
ments as well as from our actions, and to apply also 
to our judgments the Golden Rule which so fittingly 
concludes this passage on charitable intercourse. 

While criticism makes faults and failures stand out 
more prominently, it does not remove them. Unless 
criticism, therefore is exercised in love, and thus ren- 
dered helpful by aiding in overcoming the weakness 
exposed, it is the dire expression of an heartless, phari- 
saic spirit. No one has a moral right to criticise that 
in which he is not personally interested ! All inter- 
ference must justify itself in love. Yet, what an ap- 
palling amount of energy is expended in cruel, alto- 
gether unnecessary, uncalled-for, and always unjust 
intrusion into the lives of others by self-appointed 
judges, who wound and inflict pain by the unforgiving 
condemnation of an elder brother. Thus in many re- 
spectability and formal correctness kill with cold 
Pharisaic pride the remainder of virtue, struggling to its 
feet in a life of sin. 

Flagrant violations of law, outright vice and crime 
involve but a small waste of God-given powers, darken 
but few lives, compared with the persistent ravages 
caused by uncharitable judgment, idle gossip, cutting 



74 Theological Essays 

remarks, the meaningful look of derision, envy, spite, 
the selfishness of nursed self-importance, ingratitude, 
treacher>^ malice, and ill-will. How hateful, where 
they have arrogated the very amenities of social in- 
tercourse, rendering the etiquette of life a meaningless 
mask, worn on occasion, and at will ! 

Life's marked failures, the world's evident sinners 
are comparatively few, while the host of those whose 
life-blood ebbs away in the sorry doings of a perverted 
use of righteousness is unnumbered. The pharisaic 
tendency should be overcome by a deep sense that the 
rule of right and wrong is primarily for our own per- 
sonal application. It is a grim irony indeed, that the 
appearance of virtue should be used as a club to de- 
feat virtue's law. And yet, Emerson's remark is to 
the point, "Some people know the pitiful art of making 
virtue odious." Instead of attractive, it becomes for- 
bidding. Hugo says of Jean Valjean, before his heart 
was mellowed by love, that with all his endeavor for 
perfection it yet was evident that "he kneeled at the 
height of his virtue!" 

Why should I feel freer to indulge in wrong-doing 
because some one else does wrong also, and be eager 
therefore to publish his wrong-doing as an excuse for 
mine own? Or, again, why should the speaking of 
another's failings enhance my virtue? More persistent 
still, if the harm thus done to others is not helping us, 
should its guilt not weigh all the more upon us ? 

That is why the public brands all this indifferent, 
heartless meddling of idle gossips, of vain curiosity, and 
of itching sensationalism, with that opprobrious, slangy 
epithet, "rubbering!" For that reason do the young 
treat with contempt sneaky tattletaling, "squealing," 
and the telling of tales out of school. 



Discussions on Damnation 75 

* 'There is so much good in the worst of us, 
And so much bad in the best of us, 
That it does not behoove any of us 
To speak ill about the rest of us." 

If no good can be said, why not keep silent? But 
above all things why should we carry the bad things 
we see and hear rather than the good things? Let 
us cultivate the habit of repeating favorable remarks 
and take less notice of evil reports. Unfavorable criti- 
cism should go directly to the person concerned. Never 
make yourself an intermediary, or employ one. It 
savors of cowardice to retail anybody's failings to a 
third party, and discredits the motives. I am my 
brother's keeper, not his judge. Let us look for the 
good in one another, not prefer to observe the bad. 
In order to do this, let us have more love for one 
another. Mind another's business only so far, and 
when we can be helpful. Love, therefore, is an ab- 
solute pre-requisite to the observing eye which would 
reveal his fellow's shortcomings and weaknesses. More- 
over people will only allow criticism and reproach on 
condition that it is really well meant. Inasmuch as all 
are found wanting when weighed in the balance, all 
need loving reproof and correction. Yet, we take it 
only from those near and dear, whom we know to be 
our friends, and who mean it for our good. Then 
our faults are brought straight to us without wounding 
our pride unnecessarily. Most of us will receive cor- 
rection if we can only feel that love administers it with 
anxious care, not with delight that fault has been 
found. Would we Christians had love enough to cor- 
rect one another! 

We should bear in mind the scene of Christ's com- 
passionate judgment. He, the Sinless One, would not 



76 Theological Essays 

condemn the offender of the law. He alone, who 
could in justice throw the stone, preferred mercy, stay- 
ing the heartless justice of the Pharisees by the re- 
minder that they themselves shared in breaking the 
law. 

Portia meets Shylock's clamoring for justice and law 
with the same plea. The consideration, we would fain 
receive ourselves, we should, according to life's Golden 
Rule, be ready to give to others. 

"Therefore, Jew, 
Though justice be thy plea, consider this. 
That in the course of justice none of us 
Should see salvation; we do pray for mercy. 
And that same prayer doth teach us all 
To render the deeds of mercy." 

It is not superfluous to add that strong convictions or 
narrow beliefs do not interfere with the practice of 
judging others gently and in love, but rather foster it. 
All those whom the law of life has made severe on 
themselves seem correspondingly indulgent for the 
mistakes of others. On the other hand, persons who 
will not take their stand upon principle and belief to 
reject emphatically the false because they know the 
true, often will judge persons harshly and in unloving 
manner, for they themselves never have been subjected 
to the discipline of any specific principle or belief. 

Biblical Authority is our sufficient source for belief 
in eternal punishment, and we submit in conclusion to 
interested readers some Scriptural texts in proof of the 
doctrine of eternal condemnation of those who die 
impenitent. 

In the Old Testament we find the following refer- 
ences: Deuteronomy XXXII, 22; Psalm IX, 17; 



Discussions on Damnation 77 

Proverbs XXIX, i ; Ezekiel, X, 31, 32; Daniel XI, 2. 

In the New Testament: Matthew X, 28; XII, 32; 
XIII, 39, 42; XVI, 26, 27; XXIII, 33; XXV, 41; 
XXV, 46; XXVI, 24; Mark IX, 45, 46; XXI, 16; 
Luke XIII, 35; XIII, 23, 24; XIII, 27, 28; XVI, 19, 
31 ; John III, 3; V, 28, 29; Acts XVII, 31 ; Romans 
II, 12, 16; 2 Corinthians V, 10; 2 Thessalonians I, 
6-10; 2 Peter II, 4-9; Jude 7 ; Revelation XX, 12, 13 ; 
XXI, 8; XXII, 10-13. 

It should be observed that life and death have in 
New Testament Greek more content than in classic 
Greek. Life means not only conscious being, but an 
eternal enjoyment of God ; and death not merely cessa- 
tion of existence, but rather eternal separation from 
God. 

While still continuing to believe in the tenet of 
punishment as in the whole of the orthodox gospel, may 
we by the grace of God adorn the traditional doctrine 
of the Christian Church. For with all stress on doc- 
trine, and just because of it, we most rigidly enjoin 
the application of that fair test of our Master as to 
true discipleship : "By their fruits ye shall know them." 



I 



IS "PROVERBS" UTILITARIAN? 

T is a difficult affair to dissociate one's self from 

one's deep-lying convictions, even in the attempt to 
be entirely impartial. In a search for truth, nothing 
may be sacred but the truth ; yet the content and nature 
of truth mus.t be received necessarily through the in- 
quiring agent. The "personal equation" enters as an 
important factor into the grouping and relating of the 
facts of our observation. I therefore will admit frankly 
that while putting the question the answer already is 
determined for me. The idea is conceivable that God 
should in his own Word — the perfect rule of faith and 
practice — present his ethical commands on a basis of 
exchange for human merit. In that sense we would 
have a kind of bartering morality resulting from God's 
inducement to good action, supposing that man is ca- 
p-able of good action, and that the good action still 
remains such, when determined from the hope of re- 
ward anticipated in the doing. However, the absolute 
authority of the command would be endangered when 
service was bought by the promise of favor. 

The Jewish law assumed subsequently in its legal- 
istic constructions a most marked utilitarian aspect. 
The Pharisees understanding of a good living enters 
into this idea of a good life. They would not seriously 
strive to be good, unless this was advantageous to 
them. God's commands are conditioned by the de- 
mands of those to whom they are addressed. But the 
Sovereign God who created all things unto himself, the 
God of mercy and of absolute holiness, as a matter of 
fact, disappears in the face of such interpretation. 

Our inquiry, therefore, resolves itself into the con- 
sideration of the passages and seeming tenor of the book 

78 



Is "Proverbs'' Utilitarian? 79 

which would tend to create the impression that the 
book of Proverbs is utilitarian in its ethics. We would 
fain show that the Utilitarian school finds no authority 
in the Bible. There is no appeal to the "prudential 
motives," only a seeming appeal to the utility of the 
good. We therefore do not take the book of Proverbs 
as an ordinary collection of epigrammatic wisdom, sub- 
ject it to a close survey as to its moral flavor, and then 
conclude what from the first is uppermost in the esti- 
mate, and determines the procedure, namely, that it is 
free from utilitarian ethics, in spite of seeming indica- 
tions of expediency. The Bible having still authority 
for us, we turn to it for instruction and for correction, 
not to correct and rectify. But we would know, and 
so try to explain. This is our aim in this article. 

There is a very fine work on the Proverbs by one 
of the many spiritual divines of Scotland. It does not 
especially bear on our subject, since it is a sort of run- 
ning homily on the different texts of the book. Its 
title, however, is suggestive. It is, Laws from Heaven 
for Life on Earth, by William Arnot. This title fur- 
nishes us with the key to the seeming discrepancies from 
divine commands in the repeated references made to 
reward and punishment as considerations for good and 
evil conduct. The Christian system is often likewise 
laid along the surface of common life, without remov- 
ing it thereby from its foundations in the doctrine of 
grace. The authority of the instructions is divine, 
though the form is transparently human. As one 
Divine Spirit inspires, so there is unity in the whole, 
however varied the details of God's word. Indeed, 
we assume the same unity in this world. We must 
therefore reasonably proceed on the same basis in the 
Bible, even if apparent contradictions appear which 
seem to defy explanation. Human reason is only true 



8o Theological Essays 

to its nature when it confides in the infinite, limitless 
reason of its source, and suspends judgment in regard 
to unsolvable mysteries. 

At the beginning of our discussion, we direct atten- 
tion to the appeal which guards against utilitarianism. 
Proverbs I, 7 says, "The fear of the Lord is the be- 
ginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and 
instruction." The royal preacher founds knowledge 
and wisdom in the fear of the Lord. The appeal is not 
to the consideration of self, which hedonistic, utilita- 
rian, or worldly prudential and rational respectability 
is bound to take. No: the emphatic declaration right 
at the beginning of the sermon of counsels is, wherever 
you are under the fear of the Lord, you are under the 
right guidance. Not consideration of utility, but fear 
of God Almighty, is the appeal, motive, and wisdom of 
Solomon's counsels. 

There is also the evident fact from the statements 
in the Nineteenth Psalm, that "the law of the Lord is 
perfect, converting the soul:" that "the fear of the 
Lord is clean;" whereas "the judgments of the Lord 
are true and righteous altogether;" they are more to 
be desired than gold, they are sweet; but, "moreover, 
by them is thy servant warned." These texts contain 
the two facts which we find in the book of Proverbs 
side by side. The judgments of the Lord are true. It 
is a comforting conviction, sweet indeed, that God, 
even God, holds the balances of this world as a judge. 
He is righteous altogether, his laws operate in perfect 
wisdom and justice. If the transgressor will only see, 
he must find that his way is hard because it is not God's 
way. It is written in the very essence of this world 
that evil runs out, before long it must fail. In a 
modern phrase of American life, one might say, "It 
does not pay" to discard God's commands. It is poor 



Is ''Proverbs'^ Utilitarian f 8 1 

policy : only "fools despise wisdom and instruction." 

Reading life's experiences in most sober fashion, we 
see that evil will not stand. The mills of the gods 
grind slowly, but exceedingly small. Since God is on 
the throne, there must be retributive and punitive jus- 
tice. And this is no idea of a judgment ab extra, in 
judge-like fashion, after it is all over with sinning and 
blundering. Nay, sin inevitably and intrinsically stores 
up the wrath of God; for he presides over this very 
world-order, and its laws work his sovereign will. 
Therefore **by them is thy servant warned." If we but 
want to observe, we may see the workings of God's 
law, and our souls may be converted. Even in the 
face of overwhelming adversity, if but observing and 
obeying God's commands, the potent declarations of the 
Twenty-Third Psalm sound in our ears: "Yea though 
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I 
will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and 
thy staff they comfort me." 

With the acknowledgment, then, of these two well- 
known facts, — namely, that virtue will be rewarded, 
and that vice is distintegrating, entailing disaster, — 
we have the problem clearly before us. We perceive 
at once that the crux of the problem lies in the con- 
nection of these facts with our behavior as moral 
motives. The human consideration of ethical life too 
aptly brings in the dependence of our doing good upon 
the rewards which are to follow; and, likewise, the 
avoidance of evil, only because it spells ruin to the 
evil-doer. Only, in the second place, it is remembered 
that God regulates it so, because he wants us to do the 
expedient and right thing. Our limited, finite wisdom 
and insight blunderingly finds out the right way. 

We find throughout the Bible the alternatives be- 
tween good and evil conduct contrasted. It is the in- 



82 Theological Essays 

evitable reaction of the constitution of the world upon 
the ways of behavior. Men have at all times reflected 
on these issues. Even our blessed Saviour concludes 
the Sermon on the Mount with the parable of the build- 
ing by a foolish man, as contrasted with the building 
by a wise man. Had He utilitarian motives, — He, who 
was a man of sorrows, faithful unto death ? 

The Proverbs take a practical turn, they move in the 
social sphere; and, in consequence of this, they deal 
specifically with the doings between man and man. 
Because of this application to the concrete living of 
everyday life in this world, they lay stress on the social 
side. But that sufficient stress is laid on the motive 
is evident in the affirmation, "Keep thy heart with all 
diligence." The instruction makes much of the neg- 
ative aspect of right living in emphasizing constantly 
the disastrous consequences and folly of wrong-doing 
and sin, which are contrasted continually with the good 
results of righteous living. This is the practical aspect, 
the convincing method of approach. As, indeed, we 
start so naturally our warning to an erring brother: 
"My dear friend, this will not do. This will go to 
crash in the end ;" yet the final appeal is to the justice 
of a governing God, overruling human relations and 
affairs. So the doctrine of rewards comes in, but 
Proverbs insists on the justice of God, and so lays the 
foundation for his love. The right, then, is not inter- 
changeable with the expedient, though the right will 
prove ultimately the expedient, because it is a just God 
who executes justice. Proverbs, therefore, present an 
objective and absolute system of ethics. 

Indeed, the thought of Revelation would imply both 
these characteristics. Right is right, however disadvan- 
tageously it may issue. You are not to judge according 
to your views of expediency, for in particular cases 



Is ''Proverbs'' Utilitarian f 83 

you cannot establish the expediency at all. Rather, we 
are to believe, that, since it is so on the whole, the right 
must be expedient in the end, even in particular; be- 
cause God orders right, and a just God will vindicate 
his commands as beneficient to the observing agent. 
In the end you therefore rely on God's will. This final 
appeal to God's sovereign will, which makes the ethics 
objective, puts them also beyond the reach of utilita- 
rianism. The motive is no more utility, but God's will. 
If the will of God is the rule of morality, then any 
amount of resort to a doctrine of temporal rewards does 
not endanger the ethical nature of the Proverbial ethics, 
since it does not end in these prudential motives. 

Malan, in Notes on the Proverbs, collects numerous 
parallels from the wisdom literature of other religions ; 
and that goes to show that the appeal is a very natural 
and practical one. In fact, one may well find occasion 
to admire the deep insight which is exhibited into the 
practical nature of ethical behavior, without endanger- 
ing the high motive which must always be reserved 
for any true morality. This emphasis we find in 
Proverbs IV, 23: "Keep thy heart with all diligence; 
for out of it are all the issues of life." The heart must 
be applied to wisdom, (III, 4) : mercy and truth must 
be bound about the neck; yea, written upon the table 
of the heart: "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart." 
Here is evidently no appeal to things without. The 
prudential motive of utilitarian ethics has quite another 
ring. 

As W. S. Bruce remarks truly in The Ethics of the 
Old Testament, "The ethics of the Old Testament 
cannot be charged with eudaemonism, nor with filling 
out the conceptions of moral good by means of utilities 
alone. It does allow room for these utilitarian values, 
but the external blessings are of worth only when they 



84 Theological Essays 

are conjoined with the higher blessings of God's favor 
and presence." But it is to be borne in mind above all 
things, that the ''ways of man are before the eyes of the 
Lord, and he weigheth carefully all his paths." And 
in the enumeration of six evil things reference is made 
to the Lord : "There be six things which the Lord 
hateth" (VI, 16). In VIII, 13 it is said, again, that 
"the fear of the Lord is to hate evil;" ver. 36: "He 
that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul : all they 
that hate me love death." The constant and predomin- 
ant reference to the Lord shows that, indeed, "the fear 
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowl- 
edge of the Holy One is understanding." We find 
these references throughout the book: X, 3, 22, 24, 27 ; 
XI, I, 4, 20; XII, 22; XIV, 27; XV, 3, 16; XVI, 
1 1 ; XX, 12, 33 ; XXI, i, 2, etc. 

These references prove the beautiful statement of 
Professor Bruce: "In the Old Testament people did 
not dream of making themselves the judges of virtue. 
The foundation of virtue was not laid in any study of 
man's moral nature and capacities [significant in its 
bearing on the concreteness of Jewish ethics]. But 
in the ethical conception of God, whose character and 
will had been made known to them, both in words and 
deeds of grace, they found the one grand and positive 
principle of all moral life. It was owing to this cause 
that Hebrew ethics never fell into powerless empiricism, 
or a dreamy, unpractical philosophy of virtue." God 
speaks, and man must obey. The will of Jehovah is 
the one ethically good thing for Israel, for it is the 
will of the covenant God, who has chosen them to be 
the people of his own possession. 

In Dr. Oort's "Kommentaar op de Spreuken," we 
see how even radical theologians admit that expediency 
as a motive is not to be allowed in the wisdom of one 



Is "Proverbs'^ Utilitarian f 85 

who has inclined his ear unto these teachings. In his 
discussion of the moral standpoint of the writer of 
Proverbs, Oort says : ''That the prophet, the priest, and 
the wise man of antiquity became gradually supplanted 
by the scribal legalist has been the moral death to 
Judaism." Oort wants to see these reflections in the 
book of Proverbs, as these new-school zeit-geschichtliche 
Bible exegetes want to find, on a priori grounds, the 
time-spirit reflected even in the Bible. This we may 
admit in a negative way; not, however, in a positive 
way, as this would bring the Bible teaching within 
time conditions, a product of the wisdom of the ages, 
of man. 

He argues that the writer uses no doubt rather low 
incentives to stimulate men to virtue, but we have 
shown that this is not the ethical appeal of Proverbs. 
It is rather the argument from the standpoint of the 
one to whom it is addressed. Oort admits, however, 
that the way of life is found in the fear of the Lord 
and true wisdom — such as results from the application 
of the heart (compare II, 19; III, 22; IV, 22, 23; V, 
6; VI, 23 ; VIII, 35 ; IX, 6, etc.) ; whilst the ways of 
sin and folly lead to death (compare II, 18; V, 5; 
VIII, 36; IX, 18). The punishment of sinners con- 
sists in poverty and shame (compare III, 35; IV, 19; 
VI, 33) and total destruction (I, 26; II, 22; V, 23). 

Yet he concludes his discussion of the Proverbs by 
saying that the author was not a sober, rational man, 
who, after coolly considering the pros and cons of the 
way of sin and of virtue, then presented his conclusions 
as in favor of the good. Our Bible-critic overthrows 
his assumptions by adding: "From the glow wherewith 
the writer gives his exhortations it is at once evident 
that he had not given himself to the consideration that 
righteousness and the fear of the Lord a§ sugh mean 



86 Theological Essays 

great blessings as contrasted with the miserable life of 
sin. In the time of Proverbs, Judaism had not arrived 
at its rabbinical corruptions. The author is a kindly 
dispositioned man of the law." In conclusion, Oort 
even states that the two fatal results of rabbinical 
legalism — formality and eudaemonism — were not at all 
to be found in these teachings in a direct way. Prov- 
erbs not merely holds the wisdom of ethics, but also 
employs the earnest reproof of loving exhortations (see 
I, 23, 24, 30; VI, 23; XXIX, I, etc.). 

The Old Testament knows of no abstract ethics. 
It does not contain a system of ethics spun out after a 
logical method, such as our modern times produce in 
their argued codes of morals. Old Testament ethics 
enters into life in a very definite and concrete manner: 
it is in constant touch with actual life. Is it, therefore, 
not to be expected, as a matter of course, that its wis- 
dom should include words of reproof and references to 
the blessings of a virtuous life? 

It is a terrible thing to see how life's experiences are 
lost upon the majority of men. Though they have 
lived, as the phrase runs, the folly is still upon them, 
as is the awful habit of vice — in the midst of the ruin 
they have wrought to themselves and others. Of this 
fact Proverbs takes particular notice, and the urgent 
appeal to stand in the fear of the Lord is reinforced 
by the assurance that God is on the throne; that he 
holds the balances is only too evident. 

Out of life's experiences may be gathered a wisdom 
unto life eternal. Therefore we should apply our 
hearts to wisdom. Evidences show us that no one less 
than God awaits our decision, and that an inevitable 
judgment attends our conduct. This circumstance cer- 
tainly was not to be left out in a concrete, direct appeal 
to the doings of men, and in no way introduces eudae- 



Is "Proverbs'' Utilitarian? 87 

monism in the Bible code, which is typically charac- 
terized by the thou shalt of old. The corresponding 
subjective, / ought, to be sure was worked out in the 
legalism of Pharisaic contrivance after a utilitarian 
fashion. But this is outside of the Scripture canon in 
the Haggadai of the Scribes. 

In conclusion, the opinions of a Roman Catholic 
Bible exegete. Dr. Elster, of the monastery Loccum, 
concur in recognizing in Proverbs the universally ex- 
alted view, which the Old Testament, though in in- 
complete form, teaches as much as the New, — namely, 
that "with God is the fountain of life." 

"Wenn wir den eightenthumlichen Begriff 'Leben,' 
wie er im Buch der Proverbien hervortritt, und seine 
Kerhrseite den 'Tod' genauer ins Auge fassen, so 
ergiebt sich leicht, dass diese Begriffe prdgnanter Art 
sindj dass 'Leben hier ein Sein bezeichnetj dass sich 
darin als ein wahrhaftes ervueist, dass es nie zerstbrt 
werden kann, wie umgekehrt der 'Tod' in unserem 
Buche nicht etwa einen W echsel der 'Erscheinungs- 
jorm' sondern eine wesentliche Auflosung und Ver- 
nichtung bezeichnet 'Leben bezeichnet in den Spriichen 
das menschliche Dasein, insofern dasselbe sich zu 
seinem wahren Ziel vollendet, insofern das Individuum 
sich zu einer ethischen Gestalt von ewiger Bedeutung 
entwickelt hat." "In the way of righteousness is life" 
(XII, 28), "the righteous hath hope in his death" 
(XIV, 32). Is all this not in perfect accord with the 
saying of the Master, "I came that they may have life, 
and have it abundantly?" And is it not the wisdom 
unto life eternal to apply our hearts to this truth, even 
the truth as it is in Jesus? 



ANENT MIGHT AND RIGHT 

T T is not amiss to engage theological interest in the 
-*■ discussion of might and right. Especially since the 
great war began, journalistic ignorance has indulged 
freely in the popular fallacy while it treats the concep- 
tions of might and right as wholly unrelated, or even 
opposing. As a matter of fact while might contends 
with its brute force on the battlefields, the respective 
governments employing it, appeal to the sentiment of 
right to enforce their cause; all assume that they are 
trying to defend the right by might. Where was ever 
a struggle, where was ever might employed in an issue, 
that this might was not claimed to be in the service of 
right? Might is but an ancillary of the right. Thus 
the supreme governor of the universe, God Almighty, 
has willed it. Thus might is always and forever in 
the end in the service of ultimate right. 

Thus biologist and physicist exclaim with wonder- 
ment about the infinite power over detail disclosed in 
the study of nature. ''Nothing walks with aimless 
feet." In large and in small things alike the world 
is controlled by the will of God, if a God does control 
the issues of the world. We must keep on believing 
that God is on the throne, that not a sparrow falls to 
the ground without God's will, that He feeds the 
smallest creature, and clothes the lily in beautiful array, 
as well as the grass that to-day is and to-morrow is 
cast into the oven. 

Why should we be dismayed at the sight of seeming 
disorder, when we believe that God is in all and over 
all? Why despair of Christianity and the world's 
progress when we know that God rules the world. 
"God's in his heaven, all's right with the world." 
88 



Anent Might and Right 89 

Might never can destroy the right. The right is 
guaranteed by God's existence. If — as Kant conceived 
it — religion and theology rest on the ethical autonomic 
will of man, then we may indeed despair at the sight of 
such a terrible conflict as the world witnesses to-day. 
But as long as we feel that the right issues from God 
who is the creator and judge of the world, we may 
affirm confidently: "All things work together for good 
to those that love God." 

The phrases might over right, or right above might 
resolve themselves simply into saying that evil rules 
good, or that good controls evil. Might and right are 
not terms to be opposed to one another. Might in- 
dicates power, and as such is innocent of moral quality 
— unless as it serves evil or good intent and purpose — 
it is not necessarily immoral. Might rather denotes an 
unmoral force, which might be directed either by good 
or by evil. Right, however, always and everywhere 
means the moral attribute which refers back to the 
God of righteousness, supreme over the universe. Of 
course the patent fact remains that evil is actual in the 
world, and manifests its power over man. To dis- 
count this fact or to belittle the significance of evil is 
not to get rid of it. There is no theodicy which can 
solve this insoluble problem. The world's greatest 
problem is sin. But the Gospel proclaims that the 
solution of all the world's troubles is Christ. Scripture 
holds the comforting assurance that "as by one man's 
disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedi- 
ence of one shall many be made righteous." (Romans 
5:19). Thus we may feel that "where sin abounded, 
grace did much more abound." Evil is not triumphant, 
and the world's sin and darkness must yield to "the 
true light which lighteth every man that cometh into 
the world." Earth then has no ills that Heaven cannot 



90 Theological Essays 

cure. We affirm the supremacy of good over evil vi^ith 
confident assurance, not making light of evil by what- 
ever ingenious devices of the modern interpretations, 
but believing in God as the moral ruler of the uni- 
verse. 

Sin is not a "misapplied desire," "an unfortunate 
ignorance," "pitiable weakness incident to human na- 
ture, or even an undeveloped good," as Sudermann pro- 
claims it in Magda. "And one thing more, my friend, 
— sin ! We must sin if we wish to grow. To become 
greater than our sins is worth more than all the purity 
you preach!" "A sin — as the Bible teaches — bears an 
ethical character, it is a wilful defiance of, and a de- 
liberate disobedience to God. It is forever the taint 
of will, the original sin which makes man do the things 
he ought not to do, and leave undone the things he 
ought to do. We are incapable of any good, because 
there is no health in us. Our will is at variance with 
God's will, eX©pa et? ©eov." "For if our heart condemns 
us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all 
things." (i John 3 :2o). 

We therefore are fully aware of the reality of evil, 
its insidious power, its destructive ravages, but when 
we survey the world and its doings with the eyes of 
faith, we discern even where least apparent, in and 
over the things of time, the eternal purpose of God, who 
sees the end from the beginning. The structure of the 
world is essentially moral, because God made it. "I 
believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven 
and earth." Therefore we may repeat with the prophet 
Amos: "Shall evil befall a city, and the Lord hath 
not done it?" 

What a tremendous assumption rationalistic schemes 
make in every theodicy! These defenses of God's ex- 
istence, aiming at proofs of His existence, mostly over- 



Anent Might and Right 91 

reach themselves. More fitting is to-day the affirma- 
tion and maintenance of the Gospel as once delivered 
to the saints. Apologetics often becomes an imper- 
tinence, and its evidences are sadly unevidencing. We 
need less of argument in favor of a divine government 
of the world, and ever more faith in God's overruling 
power. Faith too is reason, reason on the most ra- 
tional of all grounds, divine testimony. We give a rea- 
son for the faith that is in us, and the assent of faith 
is followed by the assent of reason. As Anselm said: 
"Negligente mihi videtur^ si postquam confirmati sumus 
in fide, nan studemus quod credimus intelligere/' In 
his famous dictum ''Credo ut intelligam/' the ut in- 
telligam is recognized with the credo as a necessity of 
human nature. He also implies this in his saying 'fides 
quaerit intellectum'' This reasonable faith must be 
exercised in the query whether the world's forces make 
for evil or for good, for this is really what people mean 
when they say that might makes right or that right is 
might. You will find what you are looking for. If 
you set out in quest of the world's weeds, you must not 
expect to bring back its flowers. It is only because 
they are at heart of materialistic conviction, that people 
so often assert that might is right. Their conception 
of right is so abstract, theoretic, visionary, that it is 
indeed diablement ideal. Their ideals are merely held 
to perch upon in dreamy contemplation, high above the 
sordid actuality of this world and its dreadful doings, 
and always apart from it. 

Nay, but this world as it is, is God's world, and He 
rules over it, and in it, in spite of all the evil you may 
perceive. Truth and right, therefore, are not detached, 
visionary things, but living principles at work in this 
very world, and controlling it. The right has a foot- 
hold here and fights its way to final victory. Many 



92 Theological Essays 

people stare themselves blind upon the mere mechanism, 
the outward forms, the means, the actual that is to be 
moulded and transformed into the ideal, they lose sight 
of the spiritual. Lotze well observed, however, that 
though the range of mechanism in this world is large, 
its importance and significance is entirely subordinate 
and secondary. This world, therefore, is not a prison 
house, and man is not the sport of blind brute forces. 
God is sovereign! There is a subtle power overruling 
the world's struggles, and faith perceives that, even 
when least apparent, God is the most real of powers. 
The arm of flesh fails where God's mighty arm is 
bared. The sceptical sarcasm of the phrase: "God is 
on the side of the strongest battalions!" is refuted by 
Paul's classic utterance to the Corinthians: **God 
hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound 
the things which are mighty. And base things of the 
world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, 
yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught the 
things that are." (i Cor. 1:27, 28). 

The Bible affirms throughout that God exercises His 
infinite care in the minutest details over the works of 
His hands. It is constantly declared that everything 
proclaims His glory and wisdom, while it also is said 
repeatedly that mere worldly power and human 
strength will not endure. "Oh ye of little faith," it 
says, put therefore your trust in God. The prophets 
appeal to God for deliverance out of trouble. They 
proclaim Him a very present help. He is the refuge 
of old, the strength and habitation of all tried people. 
"Through faith we understand that the worlds were 
framed by the word of God, so that things which are 
seen were not made of things which do appear." (He- 
brews 11:3). The opening of John's gospel announces 
the Christian philosophy: "In the beginning was the 



Anent Might and Right 93 

Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word 
was God. The same was in the beginning with God. 
All things were made by him: and without him was 
not anything made that was made." (John 1:1-4). 
As Lactantius said: ''Christianus verus philosophus" 
and ''Verus philosophus amator Dei/' For the true 
philosopher discerns that all things are from God, by 
God, and unto God. The whole universe thus re- 
veals God's wisdom as the world existed first in God. 
**For in Him we live and move and have our being." 
God thought this world, before He created it. Kos- 
mische Vernunft alone can explain this world order. 
Even matter has its origin in God, and is subject to 
divine will and purpose. Thomas Aquinas affirms 
therefore even of matter: ''Materidj licet recedat a 
Dei similitudine secundum suam potentialitatem tamen 
inquantum vel sic esse habet, similitudinem quendam 
retinet divini esse/' Divine wisdom then thought and 
planned this world, God's thought gives reality to all 
things, and as His will operates in this world, how can 
we reasonably doubt that things will plan out, as the 
Creator purposed ? For God is not only transcendent 
over all things ; he is also immanent in all things. Hence 
immanent teleology, Zielstrebigkeit, corresponds to 
transcendent teleology, Zweckmdssigkeit. All things 
are not only planned by God, but take on and realize 
the causa finalis. Thus to Christian philosophy, the 
whole world becomes one organic whole, born of one 
thought, led by one will, meant for one purpose. All 
things are from God, by God and unto God ! Professor 
Bavinck observes: "The whole world is opyavov, which 
is also /jLrjXavr}; and a ixrjXavfj which at the same time 
is opyavov; it is a building that grows and a body 
that is being built ; a work of art of the supreme Artist 
and builder of the Universe." {''Christelyke wereld- 



94 Theological Essays 

beschouwinff"). 

The causa finalis makes all causae efficienteSj whether 
they be mechanical or organic, physical or psychic 
forces, subservient to the realization of God's glory. 
Divine energy shapes the world's course, and conducts 
it to its end. Sin does not frustrate God's power, it 
only reveals it in greater splendor when the world- 
plan is continued in a plan of salvation. In the face 
of the seeming chaos and lapses of civilization in his- 
tory, the world moves forward to the coming of Christ 
and of God's kingdom. God carries out his plan, and 
according to his promises we may expect a new Heaven 
and a new earth wherein righteousness dwells forever. 
Schiller's ''Worte des Glaubens'' are a beautiful poetic 
rendering of this faith : 

"Und ein Gott tst, ein heiliger Wille lebt, 
Wie auch der menschliche wanke; 
Hoch liber der Zeit und dem Raume webt 
Lebendig der hochste Geda?tke 
Und ob alles im ewigem Wechsel kreist, 
Es beharret im Wechs&l ein ruhiger Geist/' 

Though in the physical world of nature a rigid causal- 
ity rules everywhere, materialism cannot extend the 
method of physical sciences very far in explanation of 
this world and its course. Not a blade of grass grow- 
ing in the field can be explained thus. The problem of 
life is as puzzling as ever. Even Hackel admits that 
life is not the result of organization, but vice versa. 
Life exists, before it weaves its organism into its ser- 
vice, which organism is made for its function, rather 
than determined by it. The Eigengestaltsamkeit will 
not reveal its secret to the most insistent and minutest 
scrutiny. Of these fundamental queries it may still 



Anent Might and Right 95 

be said: "Omnia exeunt in mysterio/' Our theories 
explain too much or too little. 

Matthew Arnold who proclaims the natural victor- 
iousness of right under the laws of the Universe, lapses 
back into a soulless, mechanical world, when he makes 
the superficial remark against the argument of design, 
that he has no experience in world-building. "We 
know from experience that men make watches, and bees 
make honeycombs. We do not know from experience 
that a Creator of all things makes ears and buds." 
{God and the Bible, pp. 102-103). How can Arnold 
affirm the world's teleology on such grounds? He 
should stand rather with Goethe's view of nature : 

"Denn unfUhlend 
1st die Natur: 
Est leuchtet die Sonne 
JJber Bos' und Gute, 
Und dem V erhrecher 
Gl'dnzen, wie dem. Besten, 
Der Mond und die Sterne/* 

Goethe implies that nature's behavior is that of a 
cruelly indifferent, soulless mechanism, and loses sight 
of God as ruler of nature. Christ, observing the very 
same fact, proclaims: "He maketh his sun to rise on 
the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just 
and on the unjust." (Matthew 5 :45). What different 
interpretations the same laws of nature, the world's 
operating forces admit, when viewed by the eye of 
faith, or when faith has been surrendered to the desire 
for demonstration. The contrast here is striking in- 
deed and it confirms again that pantheism is really 
after all but "painted atheism." Goethe viewed nature 
as a living entity, instinct with life, intelligence, move- 



96 Theological Essays 

ment, energy. Nature of natural law is again written 
large and called God. He calls nature the living gar- 
ment of God {der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid) , but 
leaves God out. Pantheistic are his well-known words : 

"Was war ein Gott der nur von aussen stiesse, 
Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liessef 
Ihm ziemt 's die Welt im Inner n zu bewegen 
Natur in sich, sich in Natur zu hegen, 
So das was in ihm lebt, und webt, und ist 
Nie seine Kraft, nie seinen Geist vermisst/^ 

also his lines: 

''Wie Natur im Vielgebilde 
Einen Gott nur ojfenbart 
So im weitern Kunstgefilde 
Webt ein Sinn der ew' gen Art!' 

But such pantheism yields after all only, as quoted 

above; "Denn unfiihlend ist die Natur.'' 

and 

''Die Ros' ist ohn Warumb 
Sie bliihet weil sie blilhet/' 

God is not a reality, he is a make-belief; in Goethe's 
own words, God is nothing but — as the modernist now 
holds — a reflection of individual character. 

''Wie einer ist, so ist sein Gott, 
Darum wird Gott sooft zu Spott. 
Im Innern ist ein Ufiiversum auch 
Daher der Volker loblicher Gebrauch, 
Dass jeglicher das Beste, was er kennt 
Er Gott, ja seinen Gott benennt, 
Ihm Himmel und Erden ubergiebt 
Jhm fUrcht und womo^lich liebt," 



Anent Might and Right 97 

Hence this panoramic ability made religion wholly a 
subjective affair, a religion de moi, eine Art Weltan- 
schauung. Characteristic are his words: 

"In uns'res Busens reine wogt ein Streben 
Sich einen Hdhern, ReinerUj Unbekannten 
A us Dankbarkeit fpeiwllig hinzugeben, 
Entrdtselnd sich den ezuig Ungepannten 
Wir heissens fromm sein.'' 

The great poet stores up rich materials for the mod- 
ern theories which reduce religion to emotional evalu- 
ation, and which divide our judgments into judgments 
of existence which are scientific, and judgments of 
value which are religious. (Seinurteile und Wertur- 
teile). His faith, he states in his own words, as **a kind 
of sacred vessel into which he poured his emotion, his 
understanding and his imagination." Hence he could 
say: 

"Wer Wissenschaft hat und Kunst 
Der hat auch Religion. 
Und wer sie nicht hatj 
Der habe Religion." 

Emerson, who was fed to the full upon Goethe, and 
read every line of Goethe's works, transfused this 
vapory religiosity into the New England Puritan 
thought, where it broke out in New England tran- 
scendentalism, which allows large scope to the claims 
of subjectivism in the domain of religion, while elevat- 
ing nature and its laws mto God. 

But God is a God ol nature as well as of the ethical 
law. The same infinite wisdom which thought this 
worl4 before its creation, gave reality to the vrorld of 



98 Theological Essays 

things and truth to our minds, gave us also the norma 
of knowledge, will, and action. The same God is 
author of the logical, the ethical, and the aesthetic 
laws, and they cannot therefore be at variance one with 
another. One sovereign God gives reality to all things, 
content to our consciousness, and norma for our action. 
The ideae in the divine consciousness, the formae which 
constitute the essence of things, and the normae, which 
are set us as the rule of life, are mutually in close rela- 
tion because logic, physics, and ethics issue from the 
same meta-physical source. The objectivity of these 
logical, ethical, and aesthetical normae points clearly 
to a world-order which has its origin and maintenance 
in God Almighty. Human trust in these normae is 
faith in God's existence. Similarly are "the roots of 
a right evaluation of historic events and temporal life 
only to be found in Christianity," as Eucken remarks, 
"So liegen die Wurzeln einer h'dhern Schdtzung der 
Geschichte und des zeitlichen Lebens nirgends anders 
als im Christentum" {"Geistige Stromungen der Ge- 
genwart/' p. 190). 

God is not proved by man, but He ever proves him- 
self to man. If he so proves himself to man, why 
should he need to be proved? "The fool sayeth in his 
heart there is no God." Faith in the principles of 
logic, ethics, and aesthetics presupposes religion and 
thereby rests upon faith in the existence of God. With 
all the ingenuity of modern systems, God is not banish- 
ed from this world. Neither in theory nor in practice 
can you be good without God. Neither in whole nor 
in part can you explain this world's course without 
God. You cannot banish God from human conscious- 
ness. If you make your bed in the grave God is there. 
"Geist regiert die Welt." "God is a Spirit and those 
that worship Him, should worship Him in spirit and in 



Anent Might and Right 99 

truth." 

Materialistic interpretations of the world, of his- 
tory, and of economics are diametrically opposed to 
this view. Karl Marx plainly states this in the preface 
to his "Kritik der politischen Okonomie'' : "Es ist nicht 
das Bewustsein des MenscheUj das ihr Sein, sondern 
umgekehrt ihr gesellschaftliches Sein, das ihr Bewust- 
sein bestimmt/' (It is not human consciousness which 
determines social being, but the other way about, social 
being which determines the consciousness of man). 

Such an acceptance of the actual as final is to discard 
all aspirations towards ideal ends, it is to fail hopelessly 
even in the actual. Truly, "where there is no vision 
the people perish." (Proverbs 29:18). This fact is 
patently manifested in ethical studies, because a norma- 
tive science implies the supernatural as authoritative 
standard over this world. The attempt to view the 
ideal as a product and result of the actual which it 
is to control, never has proved satisfactory. It is with- 
in this very world that the ideal is shaping the natural. 
And to recognize in the things seen that they are creat- 
ed and ruled by things unseen is the function of the eye 
of faith. Thus those who find the right and its guaran- 
tee in the nature of God rely upon Him who sees the 
end from the beginning to conduct the world's course. 
The man of faith voices as a profound conviction: 
"Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Thus 
the tried and troubled Job answered: "Of a truth I 
know that it is so" when Bildad the Shuhite says: "Be- 
hold, God will not cast away a perfect man, neither 
will he uphold the evildoers." It all goes to show that 
only faith solves this problem. In and over this world, 
God's infinite power and wisdom rule, and He will 
justify His ways in the end. 



lOO Theological Essays 

"Blind unbelief is sure to err, 
And scans His works in vain 
God is His own interpreter 
And He will make it plain." 

The true meaning of things, their justification is not 
revealed in the temporal sphere, in the actual. "Who 
by searching can find out God ?" The disclosure of the 
meaning of the world's course is to be found in its 
Creator, but apprehended by faith: 

"Who loved, who suffered countless ills 
Who battled for the True, the Just 
Be blown about the desert dust, 
Or sealed within the iron hills? 

O life as futile, then, as frail! 
O for thy voice to soothe and bless ! 
What hope of answer or redress? 
Behind the veil, behind the veil." 

By faith we lay hold upon this ultimate rationality of 
the world, and its regulative principles as correctives in 
experience. Faith, the indispensable element involved 
in every act of human life, is in Christian life able to 
subdue the world in active initiative for Him, who is 
its author and finisher. All ethics but corroborate this 
theistic position by the assumption that the ideal right 
of the individual coincides with that of humanity. In 
Christ, "ruler of all nature, of God and man the Son" 
this is not an assumption, but becomes a reality; we 
know the Truth as it is in Jesus. Lincoln said well: 
"Let us have faith that right is might." History every- 
where refutes the idea that force as such ever can de- 
feat the right. Rectitude of will is stronger than the 
will for power. {"Wille zur Macht"), 



Anent Might and Right lOl 

"Thrice is he armed who has his quarrel just, 
And he but naked though looked up in steel 
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted." 

It is always the right which is essentially mighty, while 
might is in the main employed in behalf of the right. 
Even Mephistopheles is made to proclaim himself : 

"Ein Teil von jener Kraft j 

.Die stets das Bose will und stets das Gute schafft/^ 

All the forces of the world are appropriated, render- 
ed available to function for moral ends, till all things, 
all power, shall actually have been given unto the King 
of kings and Lord of lords. Hence all enduring power 
in this world has approved itself from mere might to 
be righteous might, to be right clothed with power, 
from de facto to de jure; from power as a matter of 
fact as might to one which is recognized and approved 
to exist by right, as right. In this sense the Scripture 
says: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher pow- 
ers : for there is no power but of God. The powers that 
he, are ordained by God." It presupposes that the 
established powers are in accord with the highest 
powers. 

The right of revolution by the people against es- 
tablished power and authority is a moot question. 
Calvinistic Holland revolted against Philip II of Spain, 
the Puritan colonies of America resisted the tyrannies 
of George III, Cromwell took the head of the head of 
England. Dr. Kuyper, leader of the Calvinists, prac- 
tically concedes in ''Nad ere Toelichting'' the right of 
revolution under provocation, provided it be not un- 
dertaken individually. Still it stands with the authority 
of Scripture: 



I02 Theological Essays 

**By me kings reign, 
And princes decree justice 
By me princes rule 
And nobles even all judges of the earth." 

(Proverbs VIII, 15, 16). 

Let it be observed that the Dutch declared that Philip 
was no more their rightful king, the colonists denied 
George's right over them, and Cromwell that of the 
Stuart kings. There is a divine right only to rule, not 
to misrule. "For rulers are not a terror to good works, 
but to the evil." Governments are but articulate ex- 
pression, formulated, tested expression of the right. 
They are self-propagating only as inhering in ultimate 
truth and right. They possess this only as efficient 
codification and human agency to be "the minister of 
God." "The consent of the governed" is based again 
on the principles for which the creator purposed the 
people to live in society; "the consent of the people" 
is not the ultimate source, but God. He ordained gov- 
ernments as a restraint upon the ravages of sin, "a 
revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." 
Everything in this world which wields power has to be 
accredited to moral right if it is to be lasting. Right, 
on the other hand is no more an abstract and detached 
principle than the world powers are an indifferent 
force. 

"Man needs must fight 
To make true peace his own 
He needs must combat might with might 
Or might would rule alone." 

"History is the battleground of standards of values" 
says Hoffding; but profounder is the old German say- 



Anent Might and Right 103 

ing "Die Weltgeschichf ist das Weltgericht.'' (The 
world's history is the world's judgment). Both state- 
ments, however, point to the fact that in the world- 
process and its history, right and judgment inhere to 
approve and to disapprove. Indeed it is a singularly 
crude notion that mere power, unmoral force ever 
should be able to function in vindication, in establish- 
ing, or gaining victory for the right where its activities 
are not called forth and sustained by right. You 
neither can stay right and truth by mere force, nor 
advance it thereby. Might viewed as power, force, 
neither will retard nor advance civilization one whit. 

But with everyone rests individually this responsi- 
bility to call the means into service of the end, to shape 
the world through himself into the likeness of its Cre- 
ator and Judge. God rules this world after all. The 
outlook may not be reassuring, but Christianity has an 
invincible ignorance of defeat. "Truth crushed to 
earth will rise again!" We must not stare ourselves 
purblind on processes, and means, on might; our first 
concern is with the right. Lincoln's assertion to his 
friends has point here. It is not the question whether 
God is on our side, but whether we are on God's side. 
All instrumentalism, all leanings on forms, on efforts 
in furtherance of moral strength seem futile when 
these forces are not borne onward and forward by 
God. The sovereign God is not bound by the work of 
His hands, and where He himself does not initiate and 
operate a movement man may propose, but God dis- 
poses. Business methods may of course, be employed 
rightly in religious and moral endeavors, but they 
remain mere means, and ever should be considered so. 

Mr. Mott cannot cover the world's evangelization 
in a mechanical way by dividing the missionary field 
and calling for corresponding volunteers. Not a single 



I04 Theological Essays 

man can be forced into the Kingdom by all the re- 
vivals, ritualism, ceremonialism, or other human de- 
vices in behalf of the Gospel, any more than educational 
methods by themselves can produce intellectual re- 
sults. 

"The king can make a belted knight 
But an honest man's aboon his might 
A man's a man for a'that." 

We should bear in mind Paul's words: "I have plant- 
ed, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase." (i 
Cor. 3:6). Only the right is might to the end, and 
the right issues from God. The kingdom is not taken 
by violence. Might must in God's dispensation wait 
upon right. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle 
to the strong. Dieu joue aux surprises! The first are 
last, and the last, first. Seeming ascendency often 
spells doom. There are reversals in history. The 
busts of Roman Emperors were replaced upon their 
columns by the statues of humble fishermen! You 
cannot and should not rely on mere means, or judge 
by outward appearances. 

When Christ died upon the Cross his words: "It is 
finished" spelled victory. The supreme sacrifice had 
been accomplished. Henceforth the sign of the cross 
may indeed be taken as the symbol of the sins of men 
crucifying the righteous one and thinking "It is finish- 
ed" meant the end of Christ and his cause. But the 
cross becomes rather to subsequent ages the symbol 
of Christ's victory over the sins of the world. Even 
the pagans felt that in this sign they should conquer. 

Thus Professor Seeberg truly observes: ''An nichts 
empfindet man das Gottliche in Christo so tief, wie an 
diesem Sieg im Unterliegen/* 



SOCIAL OR INDIVIDUAL REGENERATION? 

OERNARD SHAW recently declared: "Christ is a 
^ failure, and God has been kicked out of the back- 
window in our modern age." This blasphemous ut- 
terance was designed to startle the audience, and per- 
haps did so. It has become quite plain, however, in 
recent ministerial conferences, that the prevailing senti- 
ment among the younger ministers tends to think of 
the ministry as exclusively a call to social service. We 
need to-day a social gospel. The ministry of the Word 
must be supplanted by a ministry to human needs and 
life. 

Whatever Christianity may have done in the past, 
it surely does not meet the needs of our present social 
conditions. Theology now must yield to sociology, 
even in parish and pulpit. Social democracy, Christian 
socialism if you will, is the workingman's religion, and 
is rapidly coming to be recognized as the only kind of 
religion worth having. It does things, it struggles for 
the right of one's fellow-men. It clothes the naked and 
feeds the hungry. The social gospel of to-day pene- 
trates into all the activities of life. The Y. M. C. A.'s, 
the social settlements, clubs, and philanthropic enter- 
prises of all sorts figure as prominently as the church, 
and maintain the standing of the church. 

Preaching and teaching Christian truth is futile un- 
der the adverse conditions of congested centers; nay, 
the proclamation of the old gospel is out of place in the 
hard, sordid struggles of life as it is. Christianity does 
not save under such conditions ; and so the modern min- 
ister has come to see that he must strike at those con- 
ditions. Improve conditions if you wish to improve 
society, for improved conditions will produce better 
105 



io6 Theological Essays 

men. The pet word of evolutionary teachings, en- 
vironment , has become the basis of the new philosophy, 
which is to displace — 

"The old American Idee 
To make a man a man, and let him be." 

It matters little that evolutionary philosophers have 
affirmed subsequently that environment should not be 
employed as a leading factor in the much-vaunted mod- 
ern Weltanschauung. The movement which social 
reformers built on it is beyond their control. 

The declaration of the bankruptcy of Christianity, 
whether in the blasphemy of Bernard Shaw and his 
socialist companions, or in the more sinister facts of 
a socialized gospel, as many modern pastors seem to 
understand their calling, leaves us to work upon so- 
ciety through social endeavors. Thus, instead of chris- 
tianizing society with the gospel of Christ, Chris- 
tianity is to be socialized, — secularized, if you will. 
External efforts in the betterment of social conditions 
constitute the social gospel for to-day. That environ- 
ment supplies really only the means for individual and 
social development, as the individual avails himself of 
the materials which the social milieu offers, or fails to 
do so, does not occur to the modern dogmatist. For 
these socialized modernists, the environment, the condi- 
tions, are basal facts; the}^ hold the key to all im- 
provement and are the leverage for economic and moral 
progress. Moral progress, in fact, is only a finer form 
of economic progress. 

In stating the situation thus plainly we may facilitate 
the discussion at once of the principles underlying the 
spiritual interpretation of life, which raises the soul- 
concern as all-important, and of the view which sees 



Social or Individual Regeneration? 107 

behind the individual the conditions, the environment, 
the social matrix, from which the individual emerges, 
with all his merits or demerits. 

It is quite natural that the socialists, in their struggle 
for improved social conditions, should carry to its ex- 
treme the emphasis upon conditions as primary in life. 
It is less reasonable that ministers of the gospel should 
espouse this doctrine, and give their pulpits up to labor 
questions and social problems. Many of the younger 
clergymen schooled in seminaries that have been social- 
ized in proportion to their detheologizing, have open- 
eyed accepted socialism as the modern gospel. Others 
harbor the hopeless illusion that Christianity and social- 
ism go together, deceiving themselves with the super- 
ficial explanation that Christanity should manifest it- 
self in social activities of good-will, and socialism should 
endeavor to establish civic righteousness in a Christian 
spirit. 

What is there incompatible between the two stand- 
points? Why can one not be a Christian socialist? 
Simply, because the Christian believes, on the high au- 
thority of his Master, that "man shall not live by bread 
alone." While the socialist fights only for bread and 
butter, for better economic conditions. It is difficult 
to see how a fight for mere bread and butter properly 
can be called Christian. On the contrary, just in pro- 
portion as adhesion is given to the thoroughly material- 
istic doctrine of socialism, which diverts all interests 
from the individual soul on which Christianity pri- 
marily centers its attention, just on that proportion do 
we lose hold on Christianity. 

The message and function of the church are spiritual. 
Sin, the fundamental problem of all ages, is to be over- 
come by the gracious indwelling of Christ in the hearts 
of regenerate humanity. Christianity aims at better 



lo8 Theological Essays 

men, socialism at better conditions. They are, there- 
fore, diametrically opposed to each other, both in mo- 
tive and in spirit. It should not be necessary, but in 
order to avoid misinterpretation it may be observed that 
Christianity is of course never unmindful of condi- 
tions, but believes that they are created and controlled 
by man, and that they, as representing human achieve- 
ment, may be instruments of success in human progress. 
Similarly, socialism is not indifferent to man, but be- 
lieves that, as he is the creature of circumstances and 
controlled by his conditions, he will improve as ex- 
ternal circumstances improve. 

The criterion with the Christian is within man; for 
the socialist, the standard and source of human civiliza- 
tion is without. Now, to proclaim man the product 
and mere reflection of his social surroundings is to in- 
sult the moral sense of even the most depraved. The 
bold assumption which reduces human civilization to an 
epi-phenomenon of the natural, makes the social milieu 
not only a formative element in, but the producing 
cause of character, and by so doing dispenses with all 
morality and progress. There can be no struggle for 
the right when man is borne along on the tide as he 
happened to arrive upon the shores of time, fatally 
bound to the condition and the hour. And as to progress, 
it is hard to conceive of any, thus shut up in the mechan- 
ical circle of conditions without motive or standard. 

It is time to raise an emphatic protest against social- 
ism. It is death to the individual, conscience, and all 
progress. Instead of seeing conditions behind the in- 
dividual, we see the individual in the midst of condi- 
tions. We see the individual struggle with these condi- 
tions, modify them, and replace them by others. We 
often see favorable conditions used for hurt, and bad 
conditions for good. Is there not a saying, ''Give man 



Social or Individual Regeneration? 109 

a paradise, and he will turn it into a desert, while he 
will strive to convert the desert into a garden?" Oscar 
Wilde voices in De Profundis the sad experience that, 
in common with many of his age, he had used the good 
things of life for his own harm, whilst he won good 
from the hard experiences of his life. In fact, it is a 
patent absurdity to maintain that a man's character is 
made or unmade mechanically by good or bad condi- 
tions. Can the most favorable circumstances ever 
guarantee a man's best development? Do bad condi- 
tions hopelessly doom to the production of bad charac- 
ters? They may give color and form to the develop- 
ment, but never determine mechanically a man's moral 
flavor. 

Man does not merely react passively upon these 
original, all-important conditions of society. He is 
responsible for them, he made them, he can change 
them. He is not the slave of them, be they good or 
bad. He is himself the main factor, he appropriates or 
rejects their material according to his nature. Selec- 
tive thinking and the increasing emphasis which is 
placed on the volitional part of man's nature are mean- 
ingless jargon, if the socialist's contention be true. A 
good man faces bad conditions to grapple with them 
as often rises superior to them; a bad man in good 
external conditions works the quicker his own un- 
doing. It is then, within man, not without, that his 
essential destiny is wrought out. It is wrought out 
by himself, not by conditions. 

So far from conditions constructing human civiliza- 
tion, projecting it as it were into the individuals. Pro- 
fessor Perry says well: ''The external environment of 
life is in some respects favorable, in other respects un- 
favorable. Now, strangely enough, it is the unfavor- 
able rather than the favorable aspect of the environ- 



no Theological Essays 

ment that conduces to progress. Progress, or even the 
least good, would, of course, be impossible, unless the 
mechanical environment was morally plastic. The fact 
that nature submits to the organization which we call 
life is a fundamental and constant condition of all 
civilization. But there is nothing in the mere com- 
pliance of nature to press life forward. It is the men- 
ace of nature which stimulates progress. It is because 
nature always remains a source of difficulty and danger 
that life is provoked to renew the war and achieve a 
more thorough conquest. Nature will not permit life 
to keep what it has unless it gains more." ( The Moral 
Economy, p. 130). 

How true this remark is, becomes evident as soon as 
we analyze these finalities of socialistic theories, the 
conditions, the system. Good or bad, are they not all 
man-made? Is not every milieu charged with human 
effort, and subject to human influence? Could man 
then be so hopelessly subject to the work of his own 
efforts, good or bad? 

Yet, in what fatalistic strain the Boston American of 
August 3, 191 1, writes in an editorial on the appoint- 
ment of four judges: "The four judges whom the 
Governor has appointed are four good men to-day. 
What they will be to-morrow, no man knows. They 
go into a different environment and will lead a differ- 
ent kind of business life. What effect these changes 
will have upon them only time can tell. Ratigan. 
Keating, and Dubuque are men of character and ability 
and good lawyers. Walter Perley Hall has been tried 
satisfactorily in public office." 

It is, of course, conceivable that individuals may fail 
in adverse surroundings. Virtue is not always trium- 
phant. But to speak of moral integrity as is done here, 
is certainly to despair of all goodness. Soon these same 



Social or Individual Regeneration? iii 

men will call upon virtuous men to bring about or to 
maintain civic righteousness, — after having declared 
virtue fictitious. Thus it is that socialism confronts 
us with the stultifying fact that it makes its appeal in 
behalf of the individual whom it ignores, and fights for 
a civic righteousness, the reality of which it denies. 
Pleading for human love, the socialist fans class-hatred. 
He denounces greed, and contends for material gain 
as the only value of life. 

Surely, with Montaigne, we must realize that "every- 
one must have an inner touchstone (un patron au de- 
dans) by which to judge his actions." Man is a re- 
sponsible being, and at least the law will hold him ac- 
countable. The ethical life assures us that conscience 
is a mighty fact, not to be discarded by theories. God 
has left His witness in the human heart. None can 
disobey His mandate with impunity. Each individual 
faces the issues of life singly and incurs personal re- 
sponsibility. If life is our own in the last instance, we 
cannot live it by proxy, cannot resolve it into a mere 
component part of social existence, cannot make it the 
outcome of conditions. The pinch of individuality is 
with us, and with the / goes a conscience which is more 
than a social verdict. It is something which concerns 
me directly, to which I must make a personal response, 
and thus incur responsibility. 

Maurice in his Lectures on Casuistry calls attention 
to the fact that, in behalf of ethical and religious im- 
provement, appeals are made to public opinion to en- 
force the claims of the individual conscience on the one 
hand, and on the other to the individual conscience to 
bear up public opinion; showing thus that the point 
of leverage is with the individual, embodied in social 
ethics. All endeavors to make conscience a resulting 
inner response to external environment, whether in 



112 Theological Essays 

social interpretation, or legal explanation, or evolu- 
tionary analysis, fail to account for its authoritative, 
apodictive commands. Conscience neither seeks its au- 
thority from the things of the world, nor endeavors to 
justify its laws by them. For one surely does not 
reason one's self into an obligation which requires 
sacrifice even unto death. To be sure, the actual 
ethical responses are considered to be primarily, or at 
least mainly, emotional; but this does not account for 
the strong sentiment of the objectiveness of obligation, 
and sanction of duty and ought. But more than this, 
the social self is always transcended by the ideal self. 

As Professor Baldwin remarks: "The social in- 
fluence which determines the development of con- 
science almost entirely in its earlier stages is itself tran- 
scended, in the rational or self-conscious organization 
of the moral life; so that the conscience becomes not 
merely a social self, but an ideal self." 

Similarly Professor Ormond observes in his Founda- 
tions of Knowledge: *'We are obliged to trace the pri- 
mary root of the sense of kind to the self in some pri- 
mary, individual nature, that in becoming internally 
conscious becomes also the fontal type of all ends which 
it seeks objectively." "The reaction of the subject- 
consciousness is a reaction as a whole, and self-appre- 
hension will be a function of this mode of reaction. If 
we are sure of our self-activity, we have that assurance 
because we grasp it in an act of immediate intuition. 
It cannot be disputed, then, that we know the fact of 
our self-activity. . . . If in the reactive conscious- 
ness, self-activity, and not simply activity that has no 
label, is revealed, then it is clear that we have a qualifi- 
cation of the content as a whole which renders it not 
merely a that, but a what. The fact that the activity 
is taking the form of a self shows that it is not formless, 



Social or Individual Regenerationf 113 

but defining itself as a whole." 

To the like e£Eect, Fouillee remarks in his Psy- 
chologie des peuples europeens: "M. Guyau and M. 
Tarde have strongly insisted that we are under the 
dominion of continual suggestion, coming from the 
environment in which we live. . . . We disagree 
with those who reduce the whole of sociology to a study 
of these forms, and we believe that the study of its 
psychological foundation is essential to sociology." 

This fact is also clearly brought out in an able essay, 
in the American Journal of Sociology, by Dr. Philip 
Fogel, who insists against Professor Giddings's denial, 
that there is plainly a metaphysical element involved in 
sociological studies. The worth of and the authority 
for the individual agent is assumed to be derived from 
and sustained by the community in the evolutionary 
theories, though it is admitted that natural selection has 
been overemphasized in its dual operation with the 
struggle for existence or adaptation to environment to 
bring about the survival of the fittest. 

How are these functions related? How does the 
struggling individual find his place in this unfinished 
world, according to the plan which the whole is to 
body forth? Is it to be computed; or is the world's 
explanation to be apprehended only by faith ? Spencer's 
evolutionary definition of conscience as being "the con- 
trol of the less evolved feelings by the more evolved 
ones" projects from without those principles that we 
must find within. Moreover, the decision as to which 
is the more evolved feeling is to be made by this in- 
dividual, who is left reacting rather than acting. We 
have on all sides primarily the subjective reference, for 
the moral and religious life announces itself as a 
private and individual experience. 

It is plain, then, that in philosophical, ethical, and 



114 Theological Essays 

religious questions, we are thrown back on the in- 
dividual, as our starting-point. And the main objection 
against sociological theories such as imitation, conscious- 
ness of kind, social forms as suggestion, and different 
evolutionary theories, is that the initiative and inter- 
pretation are always from without. Conscience, as the 
basis of moral and religious life, may be ruled by law, 
but it is not produced by it. A law-abiding citizen may 
be of flavorless morality. This appeal to the personal 
consciousness always is assumed in the practice of life. 

When Mr. Hughes was Governor of New York, he 
put this impressively: "I do not sympathize very much 
with schemes of moral regeneration through legisla- 
tion. We can accomplish a great deal by wise laws, 
but the impetus of moral movements must be given 
as a rule by the voluntary work of citizens who, with 
the force of conviction, press their views upon the 
people and secure that public sentiment according to 
which alone any true moral reform can be accom- 
plished. I also have very little sympathy with an am- 
bitious scheme for doing away with all evil in the com- 
munity at once." 

The final sentence is so significant in its practical 
bearings that we make an observation regarding it 
with reference to American conditions. The actual 
morality of a community, affected in its usual way by 
influences within its social life and from without, does 
not materially change from day to day. Moral prog- 
ress being as slow as it is desirable, within a given time 
the morality of a society and its citizens remains prac- 
tically the same, and with this more or less constant 
quantity of moral flavor its corresponding conditions 
are maintained. 

This fact is sadly overlooked by that zeal without 
knowledge which often starts crusades, campaigns, and 



Social or Individual Regeneration? 115 

agitations calling upon the devices of law to do away 
with the evils of society which offend the moral sense. 
These impatient and cheap emotional reformers often 
have forced laws upon communities with the single re- 
sult that they have been simply broken and evaded ; or, 
if successfully executed, drives the evils into other 
channels, or spread them so as to escape observation. 
The real reformer reforms from within. Christ thus 
remakes a sin-stricken race. Moral education is harder 
than external moral discipline, but it touches the main- 
spring of human progress, and it therefore deserves the 
enthusiasm of reformers rather than the restraining 
agency of the law. 

Water does not rise higher than its own level. Impul- 
sive legalism is therefore wrong not only because the 
evils of society cannot be removed mechanically by strict 
laws against them ; but especially because no society fur- 
nishes means for rigorously executing laws which are 
too high for its average member to attain. Thus the 
law itself becomes a farce, because it has to fall back 
upon personal application for efficiency. This is even 
more true in regard to the more serious ailment of so- 
ciety, prevailing greed and dishonesty, than it is con- 
cerning the much-talked-about forms of vice. 

All schemes of reform are necessarily wrecked upon 
mercenary officials. These presuppose, of course, a pre- 
vailing practice of dishonesty, since an honest com- 
munity as necessarily disposes of a mercenary official, 
as a dishonest community corrupts or displaces the 
honest one. What, then, avail laws for safety, purity 
of food, hygiene, education, and the like, if inspectors 
and supervisors are being bought ? It requires the force 
of moral fiber in the community to enforce moral laws, 
not the temporary excitement of good-will from other- 
wise inadequate human nature. Immoral elements no 



Ii6 Theological Essays 

more can stand guard over moral laws than moral in- 
dividuals can be expected to enforce immoral laws or 
practices. 

Of course, in advocacy of restraint by law, its salu- 
tary, educating influence may be appealed to; but this 
argument, to be valid, presupposes precisely that the 
law be not too far in advance of the average morality 
of the community. The common assumption, however, 
in the clamor for laws as cure for social and individual 
evils, is that the positive moral elements of the com.- 
munity are too weak to withstand, to regulate, certain- 
ly to overcome, the evil in its midst. Thus the positive, 
regenerating cure is abandoned, and resort is made to 
restraint, which may beat back evil, but never overcome 
it. Yet, this negative, outward restraint relies for its 
efficiency upon an adequate amount of moral health in 
the community, which nevertheless the argument starts 
out by ignoring. In fine, a community whose moral 
health cannot deal primarily in some positive way with 
its evils, instead of having to lean exclusively on the 
restraint of law, is doomed. It is Voltaire and Fred- 
erick the Great again at Sans Souci, strangers to the 
cause of Christendom, and disbelieving its redeeming 
power, yet appalled by vice and wickedness whose 
powers they overrated with the exclamation, ''Ecrasez 
Vinfdme!'' It is the word of the Frenchman in the 
grip of sensuality: "Where is the woman! kill her." 
It is the impatient, faithless temper of hysterical revolt 
against threatening evils whose encroaching powers 
seem to loom larger than Christ's assuring words would 
intimate: "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." 

Unbelief regarding the strength of the existing in- 
fluences for good is evident in the argument for a 
bridled press made by Sayons in ''Le XVIII siecle a 
Vetranger" \ "That error does no harm except to him 



Social or Individual Regeneration? 117 

who writes, and that truth needs no defense except by 
itself, is strictly true in the abstract realm of pure 
reason. The question after all is to know whether 
minds capable of being influenced by error can be 
brought back by the truth they do not perceive. Now, 
when error is incompatible with the existence of civil 
society, civil society perhaps does well not to count on 
the rays of light from the truth to enlighten the blind," 
Thus in placing emphasis upon the positive element as 
the real principle in progressive moral development, we 
but repeat the view which held of the Mosaic legisla- 
tion that *'the Law must be realized in an inner har- 
mony between the heart of the worshipper and Je- 
hovah ; it must be accepted, not as a curb or rein, but as 
the rule of the inner life. Only thus can the heart and 
the life correspond, and the outward observance be the 
true index of the inward moral reality. The Law 
graven on tables of stone is to be written by the spirit 
on the fleshly tables of the heart." 

Woodrow Wilson, in one of his addresses also has 
emphatically declared that the people ought to be cured 
of the appetite for laws as the remedy for all ills. Be- 
fore the American Bar Association at Chattanooga, 
Tennessee, he said : "The major premise of all Law is 
moral responsibility, the moral responsibility of in- 
dividuals for their acts, and no other foundation can 
any man lay on which a stable fabric of equitable jus- 
tice may be reared." 

The Americans have a peculiar weakness for legisla- 
tion as a panacea for all social ills. It seems a curious 
anomaly that in many cases the liquor interests helped 
to vote "dry" a town or a state, in order to increase 
their "bottle trade." Prohibition plainly does not pro- 
hibit when the prohibition element is not morally and 
numerically prevailing in the community which adopts 



Il8 Theological Essays 

such a measure. Hence this device of legislative re- 
form as a cure for moral weakness in the community- 
life stands condemned in all its bareness and inad- 
equacy. Yet, whenever an abuse crops up flagrantly 
enough to attract public notice the cry is heard to 
legislate it out of sight. This is certainly a strange 
device in the land of the ''American Spirit," where the 
citizen has 

"The cynic devil in his blood 
That bids him mock his hurrying soul ; 
That bids him flout the Law he makes, 
That bids him make the Law he flouts." 

The appeal is ever to the law to remove the objects 
of temptation or abuse out of the way. Thus the 
Americans who think they stand take heed lest they 
fall. The Dutchman, when under strain of besetting 
sin, will summon his moral force to fight against it, but 
the American wants the object of his temptation re- 
moved by passing a law against it. It is far the easiest 
way. And it never occurs to him how incongruous a 
procedure this is in "the land of the free and the home 
of the brave." 

The attempts at social betterment address themselves 
to the individuals as private persons. Those who seek 
the betterment of society in education, and in improved 
conditions, tacitly assume that the individual will be 
first to respond to the aim of ethical and religious 
effort. On this score, the principle of social settlements 
is radically false, though it may work some good 
through its very inconsistency. One cannot apply to 
the slum population a law of life taken from artificially 
transplanted characters who remain, as moral leaders, 
still dependent for success on the disposition of those 



Social or Individual Regeneration? 119 

whom they try to improve. The effort to make the 
display of moral excellence an inducement to improve- 
ment on the part of the socially unfortunate is based 
upon faulty psychological principles. The initiative 
in moral and religious life must spring from within ; in 
the response of the will we find our obligated re- 
sponsibility. Both the tempting and the tempted are 
factors to be dealt with. But no temptation obtains 
where individual inclination does not respond to evil 
surroundings, nor is there aspiration after virtue if the 
good is not perceived as such. Thus Mill's argument 
that it is never a duty to force civilization upon another 
nation, not willing to receive it, is rendered superfluous. 
From the nature of the case, this is an impossibility 
with individuals and nations alike. 

Human consciousness is exercising a constant selec- 
tive activity. It selects certain elements of its environ- 
ment to which almost undivided attention is given, 
whilst it ignores other elements persistently. These 
constantly ignored elements of our environment prac- 
tically drop out of our life ; they have, as far as we are 
concerned, no real existence and for all practical pur- 
poses might as well not be. The determination of our 
individual characteristics is continually confirmed by 
this circumstance and the self, instead of being sub- 
jected to its environment, rather realizes itself by this 
preferential use it makes of its environment according 
to its own nature. This is summed up in the popular 
saying that each one gets what he is looking for; for 
God's decree is that each shall get his own. 

Hindu wisdom proclaims : Beware of your wishes for 
they will surely be fulfilled. Prolonged habit becomes 
the character into which a person's nature stands re- 
vealed. Plutarch said well: ''ro rjOoq eOo^ ttoXv Xpoviov.^' 
Selective thinking does in no way, however, reduce 



I20 Theological Essays 

thinking to an instrumental use in behalf of ideal 
ends, as pragmatists assert, but it turns in view the 
homely wisdom of the old saying that the wish is 
often father of the thought, even when facts seem 
patently to contradict the hopes furthered by our 
desires. As Demosthenes had it, "o /^ovAerai rooB^ 
eKaaro'i /cat oterat." What each one wishes that he 
also thinks. This fact disposes of the modernist no- 
tion of distinterested thinking, it sets aside the super- 
ficial view which treats thinking as if it were detached 
in its operation, or that thought ever should function 
mechanically. It sets against the vaunted theories of 
Voraussetzungslosigkeit the biblical statement: "as a 
man thinketh in his heart so is he" and remembers that 
"out of it are the issues of life." The rationalist posi- 
tion which conceives of a bare, abstract truth and in 
pretended impartiality formulates its cold, modern 
theories is here contrasted with the living "truth as it 
is in Jesus." We are led to consider Truth as a liv- 
ing, vital principle, and Christianity not only as a sys- 
tem of teaching, but rather as a new principle of life, 
which wherever its influence is at work assimilates the 
elements of its environment, and transforms them into 
forms of Christian life. Truth is more than actuality, 
it always transcends reality. Philology does not dis- 
close, therefore, its full meaning, for truth (M. E. 
treowth = D. trouw = fidelity) is something deeper 
than fidelity to reality, iv rrj 'ApXrj 6 Loyos. 

The meaning of reality is happily rendered by the 
Dutch word werkelijkheid which prevents the prag- 
matic use of the term truth {waarheid) by identifying 
it with reality {werkelijkheid). The Dutch know that 
koude werkelijkheid is not the same as levende waar- 
heid. Living truth cannot be identified with cold re- 
ality. 



Social or Individual Regeneration? 12 1 

It is, therefore, a much profounder problem to edu- 
cate {educere = to bring out) man truly than superficial 
liberal theories would lead us to believe. Truth is 
not neutral. Neither any teacher, nor any pupil can 
ever be neutral. Yet liberalism proclaimed the mon- 
strous fiction of a neutral school and a neutral educa- 
tion. 

We can not take the truth and dole it out, as priggish 
modern enlightenment would dispense it at its own 
discretion. Rather we are of, and hence in the truth, 
where the spirit of truth leads us into all truth. We, 
teachers and pupils alike, are servants called into the 
cosmic movement, in which we neither control the plan, 
nor even fully analyze our faith. Pascal might well 
exclaim : ''Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne 
connait pasT for as Paul teaches, "With the heart man 
believeth unto righteousness." Experience alone brings 
often the true interpretation of facts. There is no re- 
ality in religion without a living experience of our own. 

''Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be 
born. 
But not within thyself, thy soul shall be forlorn ; 
The cross of Golgotha thou lookest to in vain 
Unless within thyself it be set up again." 

We cannot then receive or inherit the realization of 
any truth whatever, unless we first are prepared to re- 
ceive it. Goethe's words bear repeating: "Was du 
erebt von deinen Vdtern hast, Erwirb^ es, um es zu 
besitzenf' 

Walt Whitman's lines are worth remembering, "No 
one can acquire for another — not one. No one can grow 
for another — not one. The song is to the singer, and 
comes back most to him. And no man understands 



122 Theological Essays 

any greatness or goodness but his own, or the indica- 
tion of his own." 

All truth as it operates takes on necessarily an in- 
dividual and personal aspect. Truth is never impartial, 
for it always judges, condemning or confirming him to 
whom it addresses itself. So he who judges is himself 
judged by the selfsame judgment. * 'Judge not that 
ye be not judged!" Cast in the alembic of personality, 
truth always vibrates with moral considerations. Even 
infidel France asserted : "La science sans conscience est 
la mort de lanie/' As the receptive mind then is not 
merely a passive sensitive plate, the imparting agent 
never an indifferently operating factor, and least of all 
the subject matter of truth a dead issue, it becomes 
plain that Christian Science and Christian instruction 
should be urged in all educational matters. 

The good precept is not readily taken, or the good 
example imitated, when the heart is not prepared to 
receive it. Thus Hosea says: ''Ephraim is joined to 
idols, let him alone." (Hosea 4:17). Quern Deus 
vult perdere prius dementat. Does not scripture say 
that their foolish heart was darkened? (Romans 1.2 1) 
and ** Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their con- 
science seared with a hot iron." (i Timothy 4:2). 

Shakespeare repeats the biblical truth: 

''When we in our wickedness grow hard, 
(O misery on't!) the wise gods seal our eyes; 
In our own filth drop our clear judgments, make us 
Adore our errors ; laugh at us, while we strut 
To our confusion." (Antony and Cleopatra). 

The fact that the home of truth is within man is 
confirmjed also by the striking object lesson that you 
can not escape "the world, the flesh and the devil" by 



Social or Individual Regeneration? 123 

the time-honored but fruitless attempt to hide away 
in the seclusion of cell, retreat, or monastary, for the 
simple reason that you can not thus shut out tempta- 
tion. 

"Hidden away in ascetic cell, 
The tempter appears with vision strong, 
And in the most secluded spot 
Finds us the siren's song." 

Surely "Every man is tempted when he is drawn 
away of his own lust, and enticed." {James 1:14). 
Hence, Jonathan Edwards described virtue well as the 
love of right motives considered as mortally beautiful, 
or as admiration for goodness as beauty of a spiritual 
sort. 

This aspect of appropriating the good through our 
inner desires makes it plain that those are most Christ- 
like characters who like Christ most. "This aspect of 
Christianity may properly be elevated into a larger 
significance. We may view Christianity from its 
inward, positive, dynaniic side, — Christ at work on 
the hearts of the believers, — as contrasted with its 
formal, external, its social and historic course. The 
issue of an inward religion is the burden of the prop- 
hets, and always centers on the personal accountability 
to a personal God. Every inward revelation bears the 
stamp of an authority over the world which it entreats 
to gracious submission to the Creator's will. In the 
conflict of moral struggles it asserts : *Be not afraid of 
their faces, for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the 
Lord.' (Jer I, 8). *We must obey God rather than 
men.' (Acts V, 20). The distinguishing character- 
istic of Christianity is that preceptive, legal, restraining 
codes are turned into dynamic, positive life-principles. 



124 Theological Essays 

Christ buttresses Christianity. As Paul reiterates with 
persuasive testimony; Christ lives in the Christian and 
thus makes the church 'a collective Christ.' " (The 
author's Belief in a Perso?ial God). 

Indeed it always has been the Christian principle 
and effort to regenerate and improve society through 
the individual. Thus the leverage of, the principle for, 
and the approach to moral improvement is within. The 
spiritual eye of faith discloses the treasure and im- 
portance of the individual soul, that it would not profit 
a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his 
own soul. One may gauge the spiritual tenor of Chris- 
tian churches and views largely by their realization of 
this fact. The more environment, external circum- 
stances, social conditions, engross the attention, the 
less real Christian nurture of the soul, the formation 
of character after, yea, in, Christ is lost sight of. The 
popular verdict that desertion of the church's true func- 
tion to preach the gospel and minister to Christian 
nurture, leads to socialism is only too true. Utilitarian 
efforts always attack preferably the material surround- 
ings, where effects show more readily than in the spirit- 
ual realm. Their mechanical notions find encourage- 
ment in the world of visible things in tangible results, 
while patient devotion to spiritual interests often se- 
verely strains the faith of the average believer. The 
unprecedented industrial development and material 
prosperity of recent years naturally fosters this attitude 
of mind. 

In 1829 Edward Irving wrote: "Men are grown 
mechanical in head and heart, as well as in hand. They 
have lost faith in individual endeavor, and in natural 
force, of any kind. Not for internal perfection, but for 
external combinations and arrangements, for institu- 
tions, constitutions — for Mechanism of one sort or 



Social or Individual Regeneration? 125 

other, do they hope and struggle. Their whole efforts, 
attachments, opinions, turn on mechanism, and are of 
a mjechanical character. This condition of the two 
great departments of knowledge; the outward, culti- 
vated exclusively on mechanical principles — the inward 
finally abandoned, because, cultivated on such princi- 
ples, it is found to yield no result — sufficiently in- 
dicates the intellectual bias of our time, its all-per- 
vading disposition towards that line of enquiry. In 
fact, an inward persuasion long has been diffusing itself, 
and now and then even comes to utterance, that except 
the eternal, there are no true sciences; that to the in- 
ward world (if there be any) our only conceivable road 
is through the outward; that, in short, what cannot be 
investigated and understood mechanically, cannot be in- 
vestigated and understood at all. [The Scotch divine 
anticipated here Dubois Reymond's watchword, ''Was 
nicht mechanisch gefasst istj ist nicht wissenschaftlich 
verstandenT'] 

"Nowhere Is the deep, almost exclusive faith, we 
have in mechanism, more visible than in the Politics of 
this time. Civil government does, by Its nature, Include 
much that Is mechanical, and mugt be treated accord- 
ingly. We term It, Indeed, In ordinary language, the 
Machine of Society and talk of It as the grand work- 
ing wheel from which all private machines must de- 
rive, oi" to which they must adapt, their movements. 
Considered merely as a metaphor, all this Is well 
enough ; but here, as In so many other cases, the 'foam 
hardens itself Into a shell,' and the shadow we have 
wantonly evoked stands terrible before us, and will not 
depart at our bidding. Government Includes much 
also that Is not mechanical, and cannot be treated me- 
chanically; of which latter truth, as appears to us, the 
political speculations and exertions of our time are tak- 



126 Theological Essays 

ing less and less cognizance. It is no longer the moral, 
religious, spiritual condition of the people that is our 
concern, but their physical, practical, economical con- 
dition, as regulated by public laws. Thus is the Body- 
politic more than ever worshipped and tended : but the 
Soul-politic less then ever. Were the laws, the govern- 
ment, in good order, all w^re well with us; the rest 
would care for itself. Dissentients from this opinion, 
expressed or implied, are now rarely to be met with; 
widely and angrily as men differ in its application, the 
principle is admitted by all. Contrive the fabric of law 
aright, and without further effort on your part, that 
divine spirit of freedom which all hearts venerate and 
long for, will of herself come to inhabit it; and under 
her healing wings every noxious influence will wither, 
every good and salutary one more and more expand. 
The domain of Mechanism, meaning thereby political, 
ecclesiastical, or other outward establishments, — once 
was considered as embracing, and we are persuaded can 
at any time embrace, but a limited portion of man's 
interests, and by no means the highest portion." 

''These dark features," Irving goes on to say, "we 
are aware, belong more or less to other ages, as well as 
to ours. This faith in Mechanism, in the all-im- 
portance of physical things, is in every age the comtnon 
refuge of Weakness and blind Discontent. To reform 
a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will under- 
take ; and all but foolish men know that the only solid, 
though a far slower reformation, is what each begins 
and perfects on himself." 

Those Liberals, who still recognize Christian tradi- 
tion, are beginning to perceive the harmful influence 
of the reformation from without theory, — when at 
least their socialist confreres act upon it in consistent 
manner. Thus The Congregationalist remarks in re- 



Social or Individual Regeneration? 127 

gard to socialist propaganda among the immigrants: 
**His conscience might in many exigencies take the 
place of his religious beliefs, but the socialist agitator 
relieves the individual of all responsibility for wrong- 
doing, laying the blame on society. The thief, the 
swindler, the counterfeiter, the cadet, the prostitute, 
are all victims of the corrupt system." 

Professor Wenley, in the Educational Review for 
October, 1907, in an article Can we Stem the Tidef 
remarks: ''Careful, and even thoughtful, about pro- 
cesses, the democracy omits to understand that the thing 
to be gained by the process constitutes the essence of the 
affair. So it stresses every conceivable aid to life, and 
lets life itself slip. In the effort to govern everything 
else, the modern man has failed to provide arrange- 
ments whereby he may govern himself. If one thing be 
plainer than another about our trumpeted recent 
achievement, it is this — they verge on the hopeless bank- 
ruptcy in wellnigh everything relating to the elevation 
of the human spirit." 

Professor Munsterberg observes in his American 
Problems: "The whole radicalism of the prohibition 
movement would not be necessary if there were more 
training for self-control. To prohibit always means 
only the removal of the temptation, but what is evi- 
dently more important is to remain temperate in the 
midst of a world of temptation. The rapid growth of 
divorce, the silly chase for luxury, the rivalry in osten- 
tation and in the gratification of personal desires in a 
hundred forms cannot be cured if only one or another 
temptation is taken out of sight. The improvement 
must come from within. The fault is in ourselves, in 
our prejudices, in our training, in our habits, in our 
fanciful fear of nervousness." 

"Better methods," says Professor Peabody, "may 



128 Theological Essays 

simplify the social question, it can be solved by nothing 
less than better men." 

The stage has its part in the evil we have been pro- 
cessing. 

There is instilled in the minds of thousands, by cheap 
melodramas, the unnerving conviction that man is 
merely, and nothing but, the creature of circumstances. 
With the exception of the customary villain, who is an 
impersonation of evil, the characters of modern plays 
are borne inevitably onward to their fall, — though 
sometimes with a display of a half-hearted battle against 
their evil stars. Could not this very seamy side of life, 
with its baseness, its vice, misfortune, abandonment, 
and misery, be presented as the scene where determina- 
tion for the right resists the onslaught of evil in the 
struggles of life? Is it not as human to battle for the 
right as to drift along with the evil currents? Must 
man's belief in himself be undermined by those who 
have most trumpeted his greatness? 

If it is human to be tempted, it is also human to with- 
stand temptation. In much of the modern presentation 
of life, we really have only pleas to bear with moral 
weakness and sin, the assumption being that the real 
presence of temptation explains and thereby excuses any 
moral collapse. It is the slippery French morality of 
''Tout comprendre cest tout pardonner." Moreover 
these modern studies of life are mostly portrayals of 
moral and social disease. But we are told everywhere 
that one does not know life if its seamy side remains un- 
known. Hence, there is an interest in. and often a 
predilection for the diseased, the abnormal and un- 
wholesome side of life. According to Zola's definition 
of literary art as ''a corner of nature seen through a 
temperament," many vicious temperaments are engaged 
in showing in their novels the obscene corners, just as 



Social or Individual Regeneration? 129 

low-lived creatures make people see the sights in the 
large cities. 

When the evil and weak spots thus are given undue 
attention and accordingly magnified, faith in the whole- 
some, dutiful course of life is undermined. Besides the 
battle is mostly lost before the soldier leaves his tent, 
because of a disbelief in moral victory in such surround- 
ings, in such corners seen through such temperaments. 
Lead us therefore not into temptation with the French 
motto: "Uart cest un coin de la nature vue a travers 
d'un temperament." 

Dr. Siegmar Schultze, in his dark picture of modern 
literature, in Der Zeitgeist der modernen hitter atur 
Europas, makes the significant remark: "In philosophy, 
and in the worldly wisdom of the educated, the sad 
materialism to be sure is diminishing; but on the other 
hand it is increasing among the half-educated and the 
people. Our contemporaries see truth only in the 
actual, and thus are earthly-minded. They see the vic- 
tory of the principle of goodness only in external re- 
sults, not in the inner good which comes to the real 
man in the struggle of life." 

Thus, as we inquire into the moral progress of man 
or of society, we inevitably are led to the individual as 
a starting-point. And there, in the heart of man, we 
cannot fail to recognize as its goal the source of all 
moral goodness and truth. To recognize God in Christ 
in all things about us, especially in our fellow-crea- 
tures, and so to speak, to live, Christ into this world 
of institutions and men, linking it from the past to a 
better future, is a Christian's faith. He proclaims this 
recognition of God's authority over himself and the 
world to be an individual act, but he knows that, as a 
man responds to his choices, so is he responsible, and 
that refusal of God's claims spells ruin to individual 



I30 Theological Essays 

and society alike. As Professor Bowen declares in his 
Lowell Lectures on Metaphysics and Ethical Science: 
"The civilization which is not based upon Christianity 
is big with the elements of its own destruction." The 
gospel, therefore, in loving appeal to man, ever urges, 
his soul-concern as his sole concern. 

"Know'st thou Yesterday, its aim and reason? 
Work'st thou well Today, for worthy things? 
Then calmly wait the Morrow's hidden season, 
And fear not thou, what hap' so 'er it brings!" 



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